THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGES. 69 



the coasts of Venezuela arfd Guiana, and of some of the Brazilian 

 tribes, may have crossed over from Africa at a time when the African 

 Islands in the Atlantic were connected with that continent, and when 

 the West India Islands projected much farther to the eastward than 

 is the case at present. Mr. Horatio Hale suggests tliat it would 

 have been easy for a people using the. immense canoes, from time to 

 time dug up in Britain and Ireland, to cross the Atlantic with 

 favouring winds ; and is inclined to find in this the origin of the 

 Iroquois and other North American peoples, as well as the Caribs of 

 the West Indies. 



Up to the present no one has been able to show any marked con- 

 nection between the languages of North and those of South America; 

 and as the time of their separation from a common stock is so remote, 

 we can hardly hope that very many marked resemblances will ever 

 be found, for among the "Turanian" languages the divergence or 

 vocabulaxy is remarkable when compared with tiiat among the 

 Semitic or the Aryan tongues. Still I believe that careful study will 

 in time reveal those few and important connecting links which one 

 cannot but think exist between many languages of North and South 

 America. 



Having thus briefly reviewed our present stock of knowledge, I 

 now return to the general question of the oi-igin of the American 

 peoples and languages, with a view to assigning them a trans-Atlantic 

 origin. Prof. Whitney has said : — " The Basque forms a stepping- 

 stone from which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the New 

 World, since there is no other dialect of the Old which so much 

 resembles in structure the American languages " (Life and Gi'owth 

 of Lang., p. 2.58). And some relation between the two is admitted 

 by most writers on philology. 



With regard to archaeology, I quote Prof. Boyd Dawkins : — " We 

 have therefore proof that an Iberian or Basque population spread 

 over the whole of Britain and Ireland in the Neolithic age, inhabit- 

 ing caves, and burying their dead in caves and chambered tombs, 

 just as in the Iberian Peninsula, also in the Neolithic age " (Cave 

 Hunting, p. 24). Now, notwithstanding the wide currency of the 

 Finnic hypothesis as promulgated by Rask, I am inclined to believe 

 that the Basques or the brown race, rsither than the Finns or Lapps 

 of the yellow or Mongol race, represent to-day the prehistoric 

 Europeans. Carl Vogt is of opinion that the Basques cannot have 



