He Gets Out Of The Way Till He Has Heard All About The
Strangers, Or He Is Actually Out In The Fields Looking After His
Farms.
We once thought that when the headman came in from a visit of
inspection, with his spear, bow and
Arrows, they had been all taken
up for the occasion, and that he had all the while been hidden in
some hut slily watching till he heard that the strangers might be
trusted; but on listening to the details given by these men of the
appearances of the crops at different parts, and the astonishing
minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded that in
some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated. Every knoll,
hill, mountain, and every peak on a range has a name; and so has
every watercourse, dell, and plain. In fact, every feature and
portion of the country is so minutely distinguished by appropriate
names, that it would take a lifetime to decipher their meaning. It
is not the want, but the superabundance of names that misleads
travellers, and the terms used are so multifarious that good scholars
will at times scarcely know more than the subject of conversation.
Though it is a little apart from the topic of the attention which the
headmen pay to agriculture, yet it may be here mentioned, while
speaking of the fulness of the language, that we have heard about a
score of words to indicate different varieties of gait - one walks
leaning forward, or backward, swaying from side to side, loungingly,
or smartly, swaggeringly, swinging the arms, or only one arm, head
down or up, or otherwise; each of these modes of walking was
expressed by a particular verb; and more words were used to designate
the different varieties of fools than we ever tried to count.
Mr. Moffat has translated the whole Bible into the language of the
Bechuana, and has diligently studied this tongue for the last forty-
four-years; and, though knowing far more of the language than any of
the natives who have been reared on the Mission-station of Kuruman,
he does not pretend to have mastered it fully even yet. However
copious it may be in terms of which we do not feel the necessity, it
is poor in others, as in abstract terms, and words used to describe
mental operations.
Our third day's march ended in the afternoon of the 27th September,
1863, at the village of Chinanga on the banks of a branch of the
Loangwa. A large, rounded mass of granite, a thousand feet high,
called Nombe rume, stand on the plain a few miles off. It is quite
remarkable, because it has so little vegetation on it. Several other
granitic hills stand near it, ornamented with trees, like most
heights of this country, and a heap of blue mountains appears away in
the north.
The effect of the piercing winds upon the men had never been got rid
of. Several had been unable to carry a load ever since we ascended
to the highlands; we had lost one, and another poor lad was so ill as
to cause us great anxiety.
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