86 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 17th. Katyirene is improving, to the great joy of his relatives, who had given him up. I am very thankful for it too. I also had a woman brought to me very ill from having eaten something poisonousfungi, I think. To-night, Ponge and Big Jerry came to me to try to get a girl named Petembitpiri from the school, as the latter wanted to swop her away to get another wife for himself. I firmly refused to let her go, and, as she was locked up, they could not get her. The man, to whom he wishes to give her, has already had two wives on trial, and has cast them off. 18th, Sabbath. Worship in the morning and evening. Good attendance in the morning. In the afternoon, a lot of Mundoo blacks went and attacked the Lake Albert tribe. The alleged cause was some insulting expressions which the latter had been heard to utter against the Mundoos. Some of them got some ugly knocks on both sides. One came to me afterwards with a great gash in his hand. His hand was split by the blow of a sharp-edged kanaki. 23rd. To-day, I discovered a curious mistake which I have fallen into in the native language. I have several times asked if they had any word for sin. They at once said, "yes," "yrottulun." As I was told this by different persons, I used the word. At the wurley this morning, I was talking to Pelican and others about the Judgment, and trying to show that in the prospect of God’s judgment we needed to be cleansed from sin: freed from sin. So Pelican asked me if those who would stand at the right hand of the Judge of all the earth would be very fat bailpulias they were not yrottulun. At first, I could not understand what he meant; but afterwards found out that his question arose from my using the word yrottulun. It turns out that this word means "thin," not "sin." Blacks lisp our "th," and say sin for thin. Hence, when I asked for the word for "sin," they gave the one for "thin;" and so I was led into representing that it was hateful to God for men to be thin: that they would be condemned for it. So they came to the conclusion that it was pleasing to God for people to be fat. In fact, I had
