The other publications known to me are:--
1. The Book of Proverbs, translated into the Mpongwe language at
the mission of the A. B. C. F. M., Gaboon, West Africa. New York.
American Bible Society, instituted in the year MDCCCXVI. 1859.
2. The Books of Genesis, part of Exodus, Proverbs, and Acts, by
the same, printed at the same place and in the same year.
The missionary explorers of the language, if I may so call them,
at once saw that it belongs to the great South African family
Sichwana, Zulu, Kisawahili, Mbundo (Congoese), Fiote, and others,
whose characteristics are polysyllabism, inflection by systematic
prefixes, and an alliteration, the mystery of whose reciprocal
letters is theoretically explained by a euphony in many cases
unintelligible, like the modes of Hindu music, to the European
ear.[FN#16] But they naturally fell into the universally accepted
error of asserting "it has no known affinities to any of the
languages north of the Mountains of the Moon," meaning the
equatorial chain which divides the Niger and Nile valleys from
the basin of the Congo.
This branch has its peculiarities.
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