234, Pickering on the Language and Inhabitants 
wrecked (William Rodman, Esq., a distinguished merchant, of New 
Bedford, in Massachusetts), and recommended by him as entitled 
to the charitable regard of the public. The simple but affecting 
narrative of their shipwreck and sufferings, and their account of 
the social condition of the hitherto unknown people inhabiting the 
little island on which they had been so long held in the most 
painful captivity, could not fail to excite an interest in their case. 
The occasion, moreover, seemed to me to be a proper one for col- 
lecting some new materials, however inconsiderable they might be, 
for making additions to our stock of information respecting any 
portion of the human family ; and a specimen from a secluded spot 
of the globe, on which no European had ever landed, or would 
for a long time to come, and whose inhabitants, certainly, had not 
had sufficient intercourse with the rest of our race to be materi- 
ally affected by such communication, seemed to be peculiarly en- 
titled to notice. 
The present paper, and the Vocabulary accompanying it, are 
the only fruits of the inquiries which my time allowed me to make. 
In respect to the affinity of these islanders to others in the In- 
dian or Pacific Oceans, I will only add, that, from a comparison 
of ten of their numerals, I at once inferred that they were connect- 
ed with some part of the group called the Caroline Islands ; but it 
should be borne in mind, that numerals do not afford so unequiv- 
ocal data for inferences in ethnographical researches, as words of 
many other classes; because the numerals are more likely to be 
disseminated by the commercial or other intercourse of nations ; 
as we ourselves use what are commonly called Arabic numerals, 
though we should not be said to have a national affinity to the 
people of that stock. In the present instance, however, the infer- 
ence from those few words was the more to be relied on, as the 
