220 LABRADOR 



a counterpart in the unwritten speech of the lodge and the 

 open. 



Yet in the human relation the tongue falls little if any- 

 thing short; its terms for a thousand features of earth and 

 sky and the endless manifestations of the outdoor world 

 are far beyond our own ; our Bible, Old Testament and New, 

 finds its way into the language without loss, and an inherit- 

 ance of story and song, no ruder than that of our own race 

 at a pitifully near period, is passed by clear minds from 

 old to young as the generations go. 



In Lemoine's French-Montagnais Dictionary are some 

 twelve thousand title words, yet the commoner forms are 

 not exhausted. In Watkins' Cree Dictionary are thirteen 

 thousand five hundred Indian title words, and it is probable 

 that Indians of superior mind command a yet greater vo- 

 cabulary. Without the support of writing, the Indian mind 

 compares in this capacity evenly, or better than evenly, with 

 that of the white races. When it is remembered that, 

 according to Whitney, three thousand to five thousand 

 words "cover the ordinary needs of cultivated intercourse" 

 and that " three thousand is a very large estimate for the 

 number ever used in writing and speaking by a well-educated 

 man," the dimensions of the Algic list of ideas may be some- 

 what appreciated. 



Some peculiar advantages of structure in the Cree have 

 been urged recently by Berloin in a remarkable analysis 

 of more than two hundred pages, entitled La Parole Hu- 

 maine. His conclusions are singularly complimentary to 

 the language; their level may be perceived from a sen- 

 tence of his last page, "Peut-il concevoir meilleur et plus 

 noble langage?" 





