1G8 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



champagne fizz or a less aristocratic beverage pop, is 

 following in the wake of the inventors of Language. 

 Among savage peoples, and especially those en- 

 countering the first rush of new things and thoughts 

 brought them by the advancing wave of civilization, 

 word-making is still going on ; and wherever possible 

 the favorite principle seems to be that of sound. 1 

 • Plow full all Languages are of these sound- words is 

 known to the philologist, though multitudes of words 

 in every Language have had their pedigree effaced or 

 obscured by time. " An Englishman would hardly 

 guess from the present pronunciation and meaning of 

 the word pipe what its origin was ; yet when he 

 compares it with the Low Latin pipa, French pipe, 

 pronounced more like our word peep, to chirp, and 

 meaning such a reed-pipe as shepherds played on, he 

 then sees how cleverly the very sound of the musical 

 pipe has been made into a word for all kinds of tubes, 

 such as tobacco-pipes and water-pipes. Words like 

 this travel like Indians on the war-path, wiping out 

 their footmarks as they go. For all we know multi- 



1 Among the Coral Islands of the Pacific the savages every- 

 where speak of the white residents in New Caledonia as the 

 Wee-wee men, or Wee-wees. Cannibals on a dozen different 

 islands, speaking as many languages, have all this name in com- 

 mon. New Caledonia is a French Penal Settlement, containing 

 thousands of French convicts, and one's first crude thought is that 

 the Wee-wees are so named from their size. A moment's re- 

 flection, however, shows that it is taken from their sounds — that 

 in fact we have here a very pretty example of modern onomato- 

 poeia. These convicts, freed or escaped, find their way over the 

 Pacific group ; and the natives, seizing at once upon their 

 characteristic sound, know them as Oui-oui's — a name which 

 has now become general for all Frenchmen in the Southern 

 Pacific. 





