398 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



each other, could there preserve the same manners, 

 and the same arts, and, notwithstanding the want 

 of writing, which alone seems able to arrest the 

 language in its tendency to change, and the habit of 

 arbitrary innovations, yet speak only one common 

 language, we can only confess our ignorance. 

 The circumstances mentioned prove a simultaneous 

 emigration from one point, and seem to point to a 

 more modern epoch ; but the infancy of the lan- 

 guage, and, in many respects, of the people itself, 

 seem to throw back the period into remote anti- 

 quity. Our first navigators found the people in 

 the South Sea in the same state as they now are. 



Monsoons and storms carried the seamen of the 

 Carolinas as well to the west as to the east, and fre- 

 quently as far as Radack, towards 180° of longitude 

 from Greenwich. We can easily give an account 

 of the peopling of this island. But we find, in 

 this province, people speaking different languages, 

 who are distinguished by more skill in navigation, 

 and who possess no domestic animals. The name 

 of the dog is known only in Radack, in the eastern 

 dialects.* These people, with many resemblances 

 in other respect, and perhaps a marked transition 

 of languages, seem rather to divide the more 

 easterly islands of the Great Ocean from the 

 western countries, than to connect them. 



* Girii and Ghuri cannot be derived with certainty from 

 Kuyuk Malay, Iro Bisaya, Aso or Ayam Tagalese ; Irio or Lio 

 of the Sandwich islands approach nearer to the Bisaya. 



