1898-99. | THE USE AND ABUSE OF PHILOLOGY. 95 
lates to the Moses of the Bible the hero of a Déné legend called 
Ni-ottsintant. The Arabic name of Moses is Moussa; now Nz ottsintant 
means “l’enfant JZousse” in French; hence the identity of the two 
personages! Such deplorable play with the words needs only to be 
quoted to be condemned. It is certainly calculated to bring more dis- 
credit than honour on comparative philology, and, at the same time, it is 
not a flattering evidence of man’s potentialities as a “reasoning animal.” 
This leads me to ask whether Dr. Campbell is serious when, in answer 
to his own question: Are the names of the Déné tribes Tungusic ? he 
compares such evidently non-Déné terms as Navajo, Llanero, Coyotero, 
Mescalero, Jicarilla, etc., with Tungus words of supposedly similar sound 
and declares that those “fifty-seven resemblances ”—including, of course, 
the consonances between Tungusic and Mexico-Spanish names—“ clear 
the way for more definite evidence. ”* 
I have had more than one occasion, in the course of the present essay, 
to refer to Dr. J. Campbell’s paper on “the Dénés of America identified - 
with the Tungus of Asia.’+ This is certainly a most remarkable pro- 
duction. Indeed the boldness of its conclusions is more than wonderful. 
I will not venture to scrutinize one by one the appositeness of its several 
propositions. I must even confess my inability to follow the erudite 
author into the flights of imagination which he gravely gives as so many 
uncontroverted points of history. As we go on reading his last pages, 
we seem to be whirled about amidst a bevy of strange looking names, 
and, before we have had time to wonder at the audacity of an assertion, 
we have a still bolder one flung in the face, until our breath is fairly 
taken away. All I have been able to gather from the author’s assever- 
ations is that the ancestors of my Dénés, after having assisted at the 
defence of Troy, followed, to the number of 5,000, Alexander the Great 
in his triumphal march through the East, and then, reverting to the 
West, made, under the name of Huns, the remnants of the Roman 
Empire tremble at the sight of their valour and inhuman atrocities. 
They were not then, it seems, the poor, hare-like timid Indians who are 
now afraid of their own shadow. No wonder that Dr. Campbell finds 
my inoffensive Carriers a degenerate race ! 
But, if Dr. Campbell is satisfied with his conclusions, I am not to 
grudge him that meed of contentment. All I must remark here is that 
they surely do not flow from his premises, as far at least, as the philo- 
logical part of his essay is concerned. Nobody would be more ready 
than myself to welcome the solution of a problem in which I have long 
* “The Dénés of America,” etc., p. 175. 
t Trans, C. I., Vol. v., part 2. 
