which it ought, as I supposed, to have travelled, but which nevertheless it refused to follow.  Just ten years’ experience has, of course, taught me a good deal of the minds of these races; and when I catch a new fellow, as wild as a hawk, and set to work at a new language, it is a great gain to have even partially worked out the problem, “What words shall I try to get from this fellow?” Now I go straight to my mark, or rather I am enabling, I hope, my young friends with me to do so, for of course, I have learnt to do so myself, more or less, for some time past.  Many words may surprise you, and many alterations I should make in any revision.  I know a vast number of words not used in these vocabularies, in some languages I daresay five times the number, but I had a special reason for writing only these.  The rest must come, if I live, by-and-by.

’Of course these languages are very poor in respect of words belonging to civilised and literary and religious life, but exceedingly rich in all that pertains to the needs and habits of men circumstanced as they are.  I draw naturally this inference, “Don’t be in any hurry to translate, and don’t attempt to use words as (assumed) equivalents of abstract ideas.  Don’t devise modes of expression unknown to the language as at present in use.  They can’t understand, and therefore don’t use words to express definitions.”

But, as everywhere, our Lord gives us the model.  A certain lawyer asked Him for a definition of his neighbour, but He gave no definition, only He spoke a simple and touching parable.  So teach, not a technical word, but an actual thing.

’Why do I write all this to you?  It is wasting your time.  But I prose on.—­(A sheet follows on the structure of the languages.)

’Well, I have inflicted a volume on you.  We are almost becalmed after a weary fortnight of heavy weather, in which we have been knocked about in every direction in our tight little 90-ton schooner.  And my head is hardly steady yet, so excuse a long letter, or rather long chatty set of desultory remarks, from

’Your old affectionate Friend,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

A little scene from Mr. Atkin’s journal shows how he had learnt to talk to natives.  He went ashore with the Bishop and some others at Sesaki for yams:—­

’It has been by far the pleasantest day of the kind that I have seen here.  The people are beginning to understand that they can do no better than trade fairly with us, and to-day they on the whole behaved very well.  A very big fellow had been ringing all the changes between commanding and entreating me to give him a hatchet (I was holding the trade bag).  When he found it was no use, he said, “I was a bad man, and never gave anything.”  I said “Yes, I was.”  He said the Bishops were very good men, they gave liberally.  He had better go and ask the Bishop for something, for he was a good man, though I was not.’