INVESTIGATIONS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. 21 



another instance of this mistrust wliich occurrod in Sanajaba, a village in Guate- 

 mala, where a man showed me some pyrites, saying that he would come next 

 morning and take me to the place where a quantity of precious metal was to be 

 found ; thinking the pyrites to be gold, in which belief he was confirmed by my 

 willingness to go and look at the place. He did not come, but another man con- 

 ducted me to the spot, where we found the first man on the slope of the hill, cov- 

 ering the pyrites with dirt. After the investigator has overcome all these difficulties, 

 still another important one stares in his face. It is the writing down of the sounds 

 he has heard. No alphabet of the European languages has letters enough for ex- 

 pressing all the soimds. For example, the Spanish (Castilian) and the French 

 alphabet have no letter for the English sound of iv ; nor the former that of the 

 French ch or English sh; while the French and English cannot express the German 

 c7t or Spanish j; the French and Germans have no sign for the cJt, of the Spaniards 

 and English, and so on. Even if an alphabet were compiled for the necessary signs, 

 then comes the impossibility of faithfully representing the pronounced sound. This 

 last difficulty is encountered in apprehending any language. The French nasal en, 

 the English ih, the German cJt, or Spanish y, can be only acquired by the ear and 

 not by the eye. The same is true w'ith the languages of Central America. 



After leaving Dulce Nombre I arrived in the city of Danli, capital of a district 

 of Olancho. I remained there some time making researches in the idioms of the 

 Tuachkas (Germ, spell.) and Moskitos. The aboriginal tribe that inhabited the 

 territory around Danli at the time of the Spanish conquest has entirely vanished, 

 and with it the language spoken ; so that even the name of both is unknown. An 

 inhabitant of Danli, owner of a hacienda, an intelligent and observing man, wrote 

 me that " the Indians of this territory had entirely disappeared, not because the 

 Spanish conquerors had destroyed them, but because they had retired more and 

 more towards the east in proportion as the Spaniards took possession, until they had 

 quit the entire district." In his communication he gives the folloAving six words, 

 the only ones still extant of the language of the vanquished tribe, Avhich have been 

 preserved by tradition for generations: scJiuische (Germ, spell.), signifying "flower;" 

 dan, "mountain;" nagma, "sand;" ajM, "stone;" ivliuau (Germ, spell.), "tree;" and 

 li, "water." It will be seen from these six words that the language had some relation 

 with the Nawhuata. Two of the six words, schutsche and u-Jncao, are almost identi- 

 cal with th3 Nawhuata schutscliit and huawhuit (Germ, spell.). Although in pure 

 Nawhuata the term iej^et signifies mountain, the inhabitants of the villages 

 KomasaAvhua (Germ, spell.) and C'hiltiupan, who profess to speak the Xawhuata 

 use, the former kvzfan and the latter lacldan (Germ, spell.) for "mountain." Both 

 these words end with tan, which, like dan of the ancient tribe, signifies "mountain;" 

 while the first syllables l-nz and huch are prefixes. I do not venture to decide 

 whether the two terms, luztan and hnchtan, are of Xawhuata origin, Avhich is 

 rather doubtful, or Avhether they are the remains of an idiom of a tribe inhabiting 

 the Balsam coast, which has exchanged its own language for the Nawhuata. The 

 term apa, "stone," is likewise related to the Nawhuata apan, which is sometimes 

 used to signify river. Li, "water," is identical with the same term used by the 

 Tuachkas (Germ, spell.) and Moskitos to express water. This proves an influence 

 of these two neighboring tribes on the language of that which has ceased to exist. 



