22 On the Affinity of the Phenician and Celtic Languages. 
5th. Of Arts, and perhaps 
6th. Physical Form. 
But these points of similarity must be so marked and peculiar, as not to be resolved 
into the common habits and usages of mankind in a similar period of civilization.” 
The surest test, indeed, of the affinity of nations, is the community of language: 
The Phenicians, no doubt, were the earliest civilized maritime visitors of Western 
Europe, and conferred names on countries and places when they discovered and 
visited them for the first time; and though their language may be said to have been 
lost, or hitherto unknown, yet it remains, in a degree, in the names they conferred. 
The names given to places by maritime discoverers, are usually, if not universally, 
significant ; and, as it is well known that Ptolemy borrowed the names for his geo- 
graphy from the Phenician mariners, if we can discover an existing tongue in which 
the names to be found in Ptolemy are significant, and accurately describe the peculiar 
features of the places and things which bear them, we may fairly conclude that lan- 
guage to be a branch of the Phenician, and the people speaking it, the descendants of 
their colonists. 
That language is found in the Gaelic or Irish and Scottish Celtic. 
By these names we are able to trace the proceedings and voyages of these primitive 
mariners in every portion of the world, known to the ancients, and their wanderings 
and maritime enterprise, at a period, compared with which, the Greek and Roman 
was, are occurrences of yesterday. It may, without any great stretch of imagination, 
be surmised that even Egypt was greatly indebted to the illustrious Homerite, or 
Arabian Phenicians, as well for the first dawn of her commerce and consequent ci- 
vilization, as for her knowledge of alphabetic writing. 
In my volume, on the Gael and Cymbri, I have treated largely on the names of that 
part of Europe, inhabited by Phenician Celtze, which appear clearly significant in the 
Gaelic tongue, and fully bear me out in presuming the fact of the Celt being Phe- 
nician colonies. 
A test has lately presented itself to my mind, which at once appeared likely to 
settle the question satisfactorily and conclusively. 
I felt strongly, if my hypothesis be true, that the Gaelic and Phenician were 
originally the same tongue, the names of places in the Eastern or Indian Seas, also 
avowedly borrowed from the Phenicians by Ptolemy, ought also to be as significant as 
those of Europe, which he had from the same source. I now.propose to give the re- 
sult of my investigation into this proposition. 
It was my intention to have made a few brief remarks on the Etrurians, and on 
taly generally, but on dipping into that question, so much did it interest me, and led 
me so far, that I found that I should do injustice to a subject which deserves a more 
critical and serious investigation. I haye discovered enough to induce me to think 
a 
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