Sir R» Schomburgk on the Natives of Guiana, 371 



those tribes with which the two Asiatic races are connected. 

 Erman relates some festivities of the Chinese Mongoles, du- 

 ring which he was present at Mai-ma-tshen, — his description 

 of their song and dance will equally apply to that practised 

 by the Indians in the interior of Guiana. 



Like many of the Indian tribes, and chiefly the Caribs, the 

 inhabitants of Mai-ma-tshen constantly change the /for r, and 

 vice versa, in the pronunciation of words. But what most 

 astonished me, was his observation, that the Maadjus, who, 

 form the higher classes of the Chinese subjects, wear a knob 

 made of a whitish rock, as a sign of the high caste to which 

 they belonged ; and cylindrical pieces of white rock, more or 

 less perforated, according to the descent of the individual, 

 and executed by manual labour, are worn by the Indians at 

 the banks of the Uaupes, in the province of Rio Negro, as a 

 token of high birth and chieftainship. Their religion acknow- 

 ledges a god of horses, of cows, &c. The Indians of Guiana 

 do not call these fancied spirits gods, but masters or lords of 

 the horses, cows, &c., and consider them to possess eternal life 

 and supernatural powers. 



Notwithstanding the greatest similarity is traced in man- 

 ners and customs, I confess I have not been able as yet to dis- 

 cover any analogy, by comparing the vocabularies of the north- 

 ern Asiatic languages with those of Guiana* I do not de- 

 spair yet, that, with more time and more resources at my hand, 

 I may succeed in finding that similarity which is still required 

 to add the concluding link to the chain. 



It has not been proved as yet whence the languages of the 

 Yakutes and Samoiedes originated; and may not one rather 

 expect that a race like the ancestors of the Guianese, emigrat- 

 ing to regions, under the sky of which nature exhibited her- 

 self in such various forms, and where life and the means to 

 sustain it obliged them to use different means, should, in the 

 lapse of centuries, operate upon a language which, not being 

 written, depended upon oral delivery 1 History informs us 

 of the rapidity with which tribes in adversity forget their lan- 

 guage ; and the Holy Bible instances the Jews in captivity, 

 who, in so short a period as seventy years, had forgotten the 

 Hebrew language. 



