349 



citpan, I come to hunting lions. The participle 

 passive is also employed for this purpose with the 

 same articles. 



Participles and gerunds are very frequent in 

 this language, or rather^ they occur in almost 

 every sentence ; whence all the offices of the in- 

 finitive and the relative are usually performed by 

 the participle or the gerund. 



Laconism is the principal characteristic of the 

 Chilian. From hence arises the almost constant 

 practice of including the passive case in its verb, 

 which, when thus combined, is conjugated in 

 every respect as it is when by itself. A Chilian 

 rarely says elun riica, I give the house, but in 

 order to express himself with precision he will 

 immediately form both words into the verb elw 

 rucmi, which signifies the same thing. They 

 pursue a similar method with the pronouns, 

 eluun, I give myself ; eluen, I give you ; elwoin, 

 I give him or them. This manner of arranging 

 the pronouns, which has some resemblance to the 

 Hebrew, is called by the Chilian grammarians, 

 transition. Of this they distinguish seven kinds, 

 which render the attainment of the language 

 very difficult at first, from the particularity that 

 is requisite to be observed in the use of them. 



From the same principle proceeds the no less 

 singular practice, already noticed, of converting 

 all the parts of speech into verbs, in such a 

 manner that the whole knowledge of the Chilian 



