THE HUMAN SPECIES. 245 



tinople, or Serica and Byzantium. At all events, it 

 would then point out the station which the builders of 

 similar edifices in America once occupied in their ear- 

 liest day, and confirm the conjecture, that the Wapi- 

 sians of Guiana, at least, are of those tribes, which at 

 a period long anterior to the march of the Ulmecks and 

 Toltecs, nations of a kindred race had passed over the 

 plateau of Anahuac. Beside the monosyllabic Othomi 

 language, there is a similar mode of connecting sounds 

 into long strung words, pervading the American, Astec, 

 and Maya, approaching Finnic and Tahtar dialects ; 

 the syllables Ac or Ak, Uk and Kuk, often recur in the 

 northern Indian tongues ; and Tla and Tie in the 

 Mexican : sounds which are again found in the speech 

 of the Arctic nations of both continents. In addition 

 to these rude and simple characteristics of a mixed 

 Tahtar and Finnic form of speech, there are Scythic 

 words, that is, words of Sanscrit origin, which can 

 scarcely be coincidences, and rather show that some 

 tribes, perhaps of kindred Yuchi, passed over to the 

 western continent. Again, Semitic words occur rather 

 profusely in the Carib and Makusi dialects,* and strik- 



* Thus, in the Dakotah dialects, which convert M to W, 

 the Teutonic Mag, large, becomes Wah and Wak } great, 

 superior, master. Wehrman, warrior, is converted to We- 

 rowanie, a war chief, &c. Sachem, a priest chief, may be 

 derived from the same root as segher, a priest, from sagen, 

 to speak, and belong to the series with gesach, schah, &c., 

 authority, right to speak, to command. Hooloo is holy, 

 sacred ; min, many, plural ; Hogh or Oug, high, superior, &. 

 In other dialects we find Eloa to denote God ; and, in the 

 Carib, Makusi, &c., there are, among many other, Tamoosi, 



