of Mandchou; perhaps
you will not be perfectly miserable at being informed that you were never
more mistaken in your life. I can already, with the assistance of Amyot,
_translate Mandchou_ with no great difficulty, and am perfectly qualified
to write a critique on the version of St. Matthew's Gospel, which I
brought with me into the country. Upon the whole, I consider the
translation a good one, but I cannot help thinking that the author has
been frequently too paraphrastical, and that in various places he must be
utterly unintelligible to the Mandchous from having unnecessarily made
use of words which are not Mandchou, and with which the Tartars cannot be
acquainted.

What must they think, for example, on coming to the sentence . . . _apkai
etchin ni porofiyat_, _i.e._ the prophet of the Lord of heaven? For the
last word in the Mandchou quotation being a modification of a Greek word,
with no marginal explanation, renders the whole dark to a Tartar. [Greek
text]; _apkai_ I know, and _etchin_ I know, but what is _porofiyat_, he
will say. Now in Tartar, there are words synonymous with our seer,
diviner, or foreteller, and I feel disposed to be angry with the
translator for not having used one of these words in preference to
modifying [Greek text]; and it is certainly unpardonable of him to have
Tartarized [Greek text] into . . . _anguel_, when in Tartar there is a
word equal to our messenger, which is the literal translation of [Greek
text]. But I will have done with finding fault, and proceed to the more
agreeable task of answering your letter.

My brother's address is as follows:

Don Juan Borrow,
Compagnia Anglo Mexicana,
Guanajuato, Mexico.

When you write to him, the letter must be put in post before the third
Wednesday of the month, on which day the Mexican letter-packet is made
up. I suppose it is unnecessary to inform you that the outward postage
of all foreign letters must be paid at the office, but I wish you
particularly to be aware that it will be absolutely necessary to let my
brother know in what dialect of the Mexican this translation is made, in
order that he may transmit it to the proper quarter, for within the short
distance of twenty miles of the place where he resides there are no less
than six dialects spoken, which differ more from