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Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



A larger name, however, marks this branch of the Celtic family. 

 It is the Zimrite, Sumerian, Gimirian, Cimmerian, or Cymric. As the 

 Gaelic ainhra, avihran represents exactly the Hebrew Ziinri, Ziniran, 

 one may expect to find the initial sibilant or guttural absent at times. 

 The Berbers of north-western Africa, with whom it is now generally 

 agreed that the Guanches were most intimately related, had, and 

 probably have to-day, tribes called Zimuhr and Amor. Of the Zimuhr, 

 it is said : " They are a fine race of men, well grown and good figures ; 

 they have a noble presence, and their physiognomy resembles the 

 Roman." And of the Amor it is recorded : " When the Sultan 

 Muhamed began a campaign, he never entered the field without the 

 warlike Ait Amor, who marched in the rear of the army ; these people 

 received no pay, but were satisfied with what plunder they could get 

 after a battle ; and accordingly, this principle stimulating them, they 

 were always foremost in any contest, dispute, or battle." Gomera, the 

 name of one of the Canary Islands, favours the connection of the 

 Guanches with the Zimuhr of Africa and the Cymri, as the language of 

 their vocabulary has already done. In Peru the tribe whose form of 

 speech most closely approaches the Welsh is that of the Aymaras. It 

 almost follows that the Peruvian Aymaras are the Mexican Olmecs 

 under a larger designation. The Aymaras, according to Forbes, claim 

 to have had an older and more advanced civilization than the Incas, 

 and they were undoubtedly the masons to whom Peru owes its massive 

 stone remains. Dr. Tschudi erroneously supposes the Aymaras to 

 have been the tribe with whom the Incas originated. He says : " The 

 crania of these people present differences equally remarkable, according 

 to their respective localities, and particularly in the contour of the arch 

 of the cranium. It is proper here to remark that there is a very 

 striking conformity between the configuration of this race and that of 

 the Guanches, or inhabitants of the Canaries, who used also the same 

 mode of preserving the bodies of their dead." The latter reference 

 is to mummification, common to the Guanches and the Peruvians. 

 According to Forbes, the Aymaras wear their hair very long, the men 

 plaiting theirs into one pig-tail and the women into two. This was a 

 Guanche custom as Pegot-Ogier remarks. He also says that, " the 

 oven of the Guanches was a hole under ground like that of the 

 Peruvians." This writer compares a Guanche temple with similar 

 remains at Carnac in Brittany as proof of their Celtic origin. Megali- 

 thic structures of the same character have been found throughout the 

 Berber area, such as that at Bless in Tunis, described by Mr. Frederick 

 Catherwood in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society. 

 The chief seat of the Aymaras was about Lake Titicaca, and a short 



