CANADA, A TYriCAL EACE OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 63 



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 language is remarkable I'or its compass and elaborate gramm;ttical sirueture ; and the 

 numerous dialects of the common mother tongue I'urnish evidence of migration and 

 conquest over a wide region eastward of the Mississippi. To such philological evidence 

 many enquirers are now turning for a clue to the origin of the races of the New World ; 

 and for the recovery of proofs of their affinity to one or other of the Old World stocks. 

 Professor Whitney, after dwelling on the " exaggeratedly agglutinative type " of the 

 ancient Iberian language, and its isolation among the essentially dissimilar languages of 

 Aryan Europe, thus i^roceeds : " The Basc^ue forms a suitable stepping-stone from which 

 to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the New World, since there is no other dialect 

 of the Old World which so much resembles in structure the American languages ; " ' not 

 indeed, as he adds, that they are all of accordant form ; for he pronounces the grouping 

 of them in a single great family as " a classification of ignorance." 



The analogy thus indicated has been viewed with favour by Mr. Horatio Hale, as a 

 valuable hint pointing in that direction to the recovery of possible traces of the i^re- Aryan 

 languages of both continents. " In Western Europe," he remarks, " one community is 

 known to exist, speaking a language which, in its general structure, manifests a near 

 likeness to the Indian tongues. Alone, of all the races of the old continent, the Basques 

 or Euskarians of northern Spain and south-western France have a speech of that highly 

 complex and polysynthetic character which distinguishes the American languages."" But 

 at the same time Mr. Hale adds with discriminating care : " There is not, indeed, any 

 such positive similarity in words or grammar as would jirove a direct aifiliatiou. The 

 likeness is merely in the general cast and mould of speech ;" such as, oji any theory of 

 linguistic affinity, is alone to be looked for in the languages of races separated no less by 

 vast intervals of time than of space. Nevertheless, this element of correspondence 

 common to both is sufficiently marked to attract much attention. We have as yet, 

 however, barely reached the threshold of this all-important euc[uiry ; and find at every 

 step only fresh evidence of the necessity for the diligent accumulation of all available 

 materials before the native races of our own Dominion, and those of the neighbouring 

 States, perish, and their languages pass beyond recall. 



Nothing but patient accumulative research and study of the vocabularies and gram- 

 matical structure of the native American languages will yield any immediate results of 

 practical value. Comparison with the languages of the old world, even where they seem 

 to yield traces of relationship, has thus far served only to confirm the evidence of the 

 remote date at which separation took place between the Asiatic, or other old world 

 stocks, and their American congeners. Speculation accordingly finds ample room for fancy 

 to sport A\ ith the uncertain clue. So far as the more northern tribes are concerned, Mr. 

 Clements Markham would trace their affinities to the nomads of Siberia. Mr. Hyde Clarke, 

 taking the recently deciphered Akkad for the typical language of the original wanderers 

 from their Asiatic fatherland, assumes one branch of it to have passed to India and Indo- 

 China, and thence by way of the Pacific islands to America. These movements, to which 

 the grammatical forms of Malay-Polynesian appear to lend some countenance, are referred 

 to a remote era of Asiatic civilization, during which the maritime enter^irise of the Pacific 

 may have been carried on to an extent unknown to modern Malay navigators. So, in like 



' The Life and Growth of Languages, p. 259. 



* Indian Migration as evidenced by Languages, p. 24. 



