The
Bakele verb delights in the active voice, and will avoid the
passive even by a considerable circumlocution. The Benga takes an
intermediate position in this respect, and uses the active and
passive very much as we do in English."
The Corisco branch of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions
was established by the Rev. James S. Mackey in 1850. It made as
much progress as could be expected, and in 1862 it numbered 110
scholars and 65 communicants; the total of those baptized was 80,
and 15 had been suspended. The members applied themselves, as the
list of their publications shows, with peculiar ardour to the
language, and they did not neglect natural history and short
explorations of the adjoining interior. They had sent home
specimens of the six reptilia, the six snails and land shells,
the seventy-five sea shells, and the 110 fishes, all known by
name, which they collected upon the island and in the bay. It is
to be presumed that careful dredging will bring to light many
more: the pools are said to produce a small black fish, local as
the Proteus anguineus of the Styrian caves, to mention no other.
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