INDIAN HOME LIFE. IOI 



menced by the man with a B, by the woman was 

 begun with an A. 



Although I could surmise the cause of this discrep- 

 ancy, which in some instances was even more marked, 

 I could not be satisfied to trust to my own inexperi- 

 enced reasoning, but turned to the greatest authority 

 upon any such subject in his day — the immortal 

 Humboldt. Some light was thus afforded, for he had 

 noticed the same peculiarity. "The contrast between 

 the dialects of the sexes is so great that to explain it 

 satisfactorily, we must refer to another cause (than 

 difference in sex), and this may perhaps be found in 

 the barbarous custom practiced by the Caribs, of kill- 

 ing their male prisoners, and carrying the wives of 

 the vanquished into captivity. When the Caribs made 

 an irruption into the West Indies, they arrived there 

 as a band of warriors, not as colonists accompanied 

 by their families. The language of the female sex 

 was formed by degrees, as the conquerors contracted 

 alliances with the foreign women ; it was composed 

 of new elements, words distinct from the Carib words, 

 which in the interior of the gynecaeums were trans- 

 mitted from generation to generation, but on which 

 the structure, the combinations, the grammatical 

 forms of the language of the men, exercised an 

 influence." 



Seeking farther, I found in an ancient volume, a 

 French work published in 1658, conclusive evidence 

 in place of what was with Humboldt mostly conjecture. 

 It says : The Caribs have an original language 

 peculiar to them alone, like any other nation, which 

 they speak among themselves. The men have many 

 peculiar expressions which the women understand very 



