296 SOME LAWS OF PHONETIC CHANGE 
Khitan, fierce, warlike, indomitable, as many of their tribes have 
proved themselves on mountain and plain, have never taken rank 
among the masters of the sea. Their very passage to this Western 
World has been the stepping stones of the Kurile and Aleutian 
Isles, with land in sight for almost all the way. 
To return to language ; we look in vain in our Basque lexicons 
for the compound words of the Iroquois tongue, but in Koriak, in 
Kamtchatdale, and in Japanese, we discover, not indeed the precise 
words, for a few centuries may suffice to alter these, but some of the 
elements of which they are composed. ‘Take, for instance, the 
Troquois word for silver. It is hwichtan-oron. Iam not sufficiently 
versed in ancient Lroquois to know the meaning of its component parts, 
but there can be no doubt that the first of these, hwichtan, is the same 
as wychtin in the Koriak word elnipel-wychtin, denoting the same 
metal. An Iroquois word for the colour yellow is cheena-guarle, 
und yuarle is apparently the same word as karal/o in the Kamtchat- 
dale duchl-karallo, which means not yellow indeed but green, colours 
not always distinguishable by savages, for the Koriak uses the same 
term, nizil-tshachain, for both. Another Iroquois word for yellow is 
hotgikkwa-rogon, of which the latter member, rojon, corresponds 
with grachen in the distinctive Koriak term for yellow, nuutel- 
grachen. Weare ona surer foundation in regard to the Iroquois 
words for red, two of which are otquech turoku and quwen-tarogon. 
The first part of each word is a variation of the terms otweacha, 
hotkwensa, blood. The Koriak red is nitshel-rachen, although nitshel 
is sometimes used alone. The latter Koriak word does not seem to 
denote blood. Still the rachen of mitshel-rachen, red, and the grachen 
of suntel-grachen, yellow, are doubtless variations of the Iroquois 
rogon of hotyikkwa-rogon, yellow, and the tarogon of quwen-tarogon, 
red. The explanation of these terms is found in the Japanese. One 
of its words for red is chi-darake-no, literally, ‘‘ smeared with blood,” 
for chi denotes “blood,” and darake, or with the particle durake-no, 
means ‘smeared with.” Hence the Iroquois words for red, in which 
we have already found the equivalents of the Japanese chi, blood, 
plainly exhibit their Northern Asiatic origin, for twroku and tarogon 
are the Japanese du rake and darakeno, as well as the ruchen and 
yrachen of the Koriak. Taking the Japanese also as the more 
correct form of the language, it follows that the Iroquois have been 
