r x. For example, the word
"tonda" with a breve above the letter "o" will appear as "t[)o]nda" in
the following text.]

All along the coast of Northern Guinea, a distance of nearly fifteen
hundred miles,--from Cape Mesurado to the mouth of the Niger,--the
Kree, Grebo, and Basa form one general family, and speak the Mandu
language. On the Ivory Coast another language is spoken between Frisco
and Dick's Cove. It is designated as the Av[)e]kw[)o]m language, and
in its verbal and inflective character is not closely related to the
Mandu. The dialects of Popo, Dahomey, Ashantee, and Akra are
resolvable into a family or language called the _Fantyipin_. All these
dialects, to a greater or less extent, have incorporated many foreign
words,--Dutch, French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and even many
words from Madagascar. The language of the Gold and Ivory Coasts we
find much fuller than those on the Grain Coast. Wherever commerce or
mechanical enterprise imparts a quickening touch, we find the
vocabulary of the African amplified. Susceptible, apt, and cunning,
the coast tribes, on account of their intercourse with the outside
world, have been greatly changed. We are sorry that the change has not
always been for the better. Uncivilized sailors, and brainless and
heartless speculators, have sown the rankest seeds of an effete
Caucasian civilization in the hearts of the unsuspecting Africans.
These poor people have learned to cheat, lie, steal; are capable of
remarkable diplomacy and treachery; have learned well the art of
flattery and extreme cruelty. Mr. Wilson says,--

"The Sooahelee, or Swahere language, spoken by the
aboriginal inhabitants of Zanzibar, is very nearly allied to
the Mpongwe, which is spoken on the western coast in very
nearly the same parallel of latitude. _One-fifth of the
words of these two dialects are either the same, or so
nearly so that they may easily be traced to the same root_."

The Italics are our own. The above was written just a quarter of a
century ago.

"The language of Uyanzi seemed to us to be a mixture of
almost all Central African dialects. Our great stock of
native words, in all dialects, proved of immense use to me;
and in three days I discovered, after classifying and
comparing the words heard from the Wy-anzi with other
African words, that I was tolerably proficient, at least for
all practical purposes, in the Kiyanzi d