263 



seems as little danger of this as there is in the case of a young 

 opossum on the back of its mother. 



About their language I shall say little, as at some future date 

 I hope to forward a paper on this subject to your Society. It is 

 a beautiful language — or rather, contains the elements of a very 

 perfect one. 80 philosophical is it, that it forces the conclusion 

 that this despised race in times remote and in other lands was 

 very much higher in the social scale than we now find it. Take 

 only the question of gender. They have stolen a march upon 

 us. They distinguish carefully between organic and inorganic 

 nature. AVhatever lives will live an animal or a vegetable life. If 

 animal, the gender will be male or female ; then comes the vege- 

 table, or lowest form of life; then inorganic nature. A tree living- 

 belongs to the third gender ; cut dow^n it passes into the fourth. 

 All adjectives capable of the intlection must agree with their 

 nouns in gender, and the verb in the third singular has all four 

 forms and must likewise agree in gender with its noun. The 

 w^ord inueJany (shadow) is a beautiful illustration of the saying 

 that the exception confirms the rule. It is the only exception 

 know^n to me. It is of the third gender. The fourth gender 

 always denotes a passive state. " The stone is on the ground "' 

 can only mean in this language " is inanimate on the ground." 

 Xow a shadow seems to move and of itself. Therefore I suppose 

 they rank it with the lowest form of life. Fruits, as well as the 

 trees producing them, belong to the third gender. The moon is 

 masculine, the sun feminine. All this may seem surprising. 

 But this is little. Their language abounds in highly meta- 

 physical distinctions unknown to ours. The preciseness with 

 which they express the different modes of being is astonishing. 

 And yet l^ecause they translate one of these modes by sit doiun, 

 it has been argued that they have no substantive verb ! They 

 have a verb to he in a sense to which we can lay no claim. It 

 unites the perfections of the Latin or Saxon verb with those of 

 the Celtic, and goes far beyond the powers of either. But I 

 must not enlarge now upon this subject. 



We have gained at last the complete confidence of these 

 tribes. They are bright enough, and take very kindly to agri- 

 culture. If reasonably assisted, even if left unmolested with a 

 sufficient territory, we could reproduce on the Daly River those 

 "Reductions" which a recent writer, Henry George, says, "To their 

 eternal honour, the Jesuits instituted, and so long maintained in 

 Paraguay." All the elements necessary to bring al)out such a 

 state of things are present in ever-expanding power, notably, to 

 quote the same writer, " The only force that has ever proved 

 competent for it — a strong and definite religious faith." Shall 

 we succeed ? Even in the interests of science, Australia should 



