GOVERNMENT AND LANGUAGE. 219 in English, is represented in the Bantu language by a single word. The following instance from the Swahili language will serve to make my meaning clearer : He who will give him the knife, atakayekimpa kisu : here, a = he, taka = will, ye = who, ki = it, m = him, pa = give, kisu = knife.

It need scarcely be said that the Waganda have no written language, and until the establishment of our mission in the country the language had never been studied, and no attempt had been made to reduce it to writing. Now, however, a considerable insight has been obtained into the language, a large number of words have been collected, and the translation of the Bible has been commenced. In reducing Luganda to writing we have adopted the Roman character, as, apart from other reasons, it proves to be well suited to the genius of the language, and by a few simple rules of pronunciation can be made to represent all the sounds found in it, as well as any characters could be expected to do. Only twentyfour letters are used, neither X nor Q being required : the former sound is absolutely wanting, and the latter, though found, is more correctly represented by kw- or ku-.

The Waganda have a number of tales which they relate about the former monarchs of Uganda, many of whom are semi-mythical persons. The hero of most of these stories is Ham or Kintu, the first king of Uganda. The following legend will serve as a