THE CALIFORNIAN PENINSULA. 395 
Madrid newspaper, if one happens to be seen in California a year or more after 
its appearance ; or to enlarge upon the merits of the Saints, and to explain, for 
instance, how they renounced all vanity, forsaking princely possessions and 
even kingdoms, and distributed their property among the poor; how their lives 
were spent in voluntary poverty, vhastity, and humility; and, further, that 
they subjected themselves for years to the severest penances, conquered their 
passions and subdued their inclinations; that they devotgd daily eight and 
more hours to prayer and contemplation; that they disregarded worldly con- 
cerns and even their own lives; slept on the bare ground, and abstained from 
meat and wine. For want of words, the poor preacher has to place his finger 
to his mouth in order to illustrate eating; and concerning the comforts of life, 
every Californian will tell him that he never, as long as he lived, slept in a 
bed; that he is entirely unacquainted with such articles as bread, wine, and 
beer; and that, excepting rats and mice, he hardly ever tasted any kind of 
meat. . 
The above-mentioned and a great many other words are wanting in the 
Waicuri language, simply because those who speak it never use these terms; 
their almost animal-like existence and narrow compass of ideas rendering the 
application of such expressions superfluous. But concerning heat or cold, rain 
or sickness, they content themselves by saying, 7é ts warm, it rains, this or 
that person is sick, and nothing else. Sentences like the following: “The 
sickness has much weakened a certain person;” or, “cold is less endurable 
than heat ;”’ or, “after rain follows sunshine,” &c., are certainly very simple 
in themselves and current among all peasants in Europe, yet infinitely above 
the range of thought and speech of the Californians. 
They cannot express the degrees of relationship, for instance, father, mother, 
son, brother, nor the parts of the human body, nor many other words, such as 
word or speech, breath, pain, comrade, §c., singly and without prefixing the 
possessive pronouns my, thy, our, §c. 'They say, therefore, beddre, eddre, tigre, 
kepedare, &c., that is, my, thy, his, our father ; and bécue, écue, ticue, kepécue, 
that is, my, thy, his, our mother. So also mapa, etapa, tapd, that is, my, thy, 
his forehead. Minami, einamu, tinami, that is, my, thy, his nose; betania, 
etania, tishania, my, thy, his word; menembet, enembei, tenembet, my, thy, his 
pain, &c. But no Californian who speaks the Waicuri is able to say what the 
words are, cue, apa, nami, tania, and nembet, express, for father, forehead, 
word, or pain are significations which they never thought of using in a general 
sense, and far less has it ever entered their minds to speak, for instance, of the 
duties of a father, of a gloomy, a serene, a narrow or large forehead, or to make 
a long, a flat or an aquiline nose the subject of their conversation. 
The Waicuri language is exceedingly deficient in prepositions and conjunc- 
tions. Of the first class of words, there exist only two that have a definite ap- 
plication, namely, tina, on or upon, and déve or tipitshed, which is equivalent 
to the phrase on account of or for (propter.) The prepositions owt, in, before, 
through, with, for (pro,) against, by, &c., are either represented by the words 
me, pe, and te, which have ali the same meaning, or they are not expressed at 
all. The article is entirely wanting, and the nouns are not declined. The 
* conjunction ¢tshie, and, is always placed after the words which it has to connect ; 
the other conjunctions, such as (hat, but, than, because, neither, nor, yet, as, 
though, &c., are all wanting, and likewise the relative pronouns which and who, 
so frequently occurring in other languages. ‘They have no adverbs derived 
from adjectives, and hardly any of the primitive class. The comparative and 
superlative cannot be expressed, and even the words more and less do not exist, 
and instead of saying, therefore, Peter is taller and has more than Paul, they 
have to use the paraphrase, Peter is tall and has much, Paul is not tall and 
has not much. 
