A Handbook of the Swahili Language, as Spoken at Zanzibar

The work, then, which is here begun is not to be regarded as though its utility were confined to the islands and the narrow strip of coast of which this language is the vernacular, but much rather as the broad foundation on which our labours in the far inte rior must for many years be built up. As there is no way by which those inner lands are so ordinarily or can be so easily reached as from Zanzibar and the coast dependent on it, so neither is there any way by which we can make ourselves so readily intelligible, or by which the Gospel can be preached so soon or so well as by means of the language of Zanzibar and its dependen cies, to which this work is intended as an introduction - a language which, through its Arabic relations, has a hold on revealed religion, and even on European thought, while, through its negro structure, it is exactly fitted to serve as an interpreter of that re ligion and those thoughts to men who have not yet even heard of their existence.

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