NAM KB OF CONSTELLATlOfcB. 805 



etri.ctiou of which is entirely different; I may cite as 

 examples the Guarany and th Omagua,* languages of na- 

 tions formerly very powerful. It may be conceived that, 

 with the worship of tne stars and of the powers of nature, 

 words which have a relation to these objects might pass 

 from one idiom to another. I showed the constellation of 

 the Southern Cross to a Pareni Indian, who covered the 

 lantern while I was taking the circum-meridian heights of 

 the stars; and he called it Eahumehi, a name which the 

 caribe fish, or serra sakne, also bears in Pareni. He 

 was ignorant of the name of the belt of Orion ; but a Poig- 

 nave Indian,t who knew the constellations better, assured 

 me that in his tongue the belt of Orion bore the name of 

 Fuebot; he called the moon Zenquerot. These two words 

 have a very peculiar character for words of American origin. 

 As the names of the constellations may have been trans- 

 mitted to immense distances from one nation to another, 

 these Poignave words have fixed the attention of the learned, 

 who have imagined they recognize the Phoenician and 

 Moabite tongues in the word camosi of the Pareni. Fuelot 

 and zenquerot seem to remind us of the PhoBnician words 

 mot (clay), ardod (oak-tree), ephod, &c. But what can we 

 conclude from simple terminations which are most fre- 

 quently foreign to the roots? In Hebrew the feminine 

 plurals terminate also in oth. I noted entire phrases in 

 Poignave ; but the young man whom I interrogated spoke 

 so quick that I could not seize the division of the words, 

 and should have mixed them confusedly together had I 

 attempted to write them down .J 



* Sun and Moon, in Guarany, Quarasi and Jasi; in Omagua, Huarassi 

 nd Jase. I shall give, farther on, these same words in *he principal 

 languages of the old and new worlds. (See note at pp. 326-328.) 



f At the Orinoco the Puignaves, or Poignaves, are distinguished from the 

 Gttipu/iaves (Uipunavi). The latter, on account of their language, are 

 considered as belonging to the Maypure and Cabre nations ; yet water is 

 called in Poignave, as well as in Maypure, oueni. 



For a curious example of this, see the speech of Artabanes in 

 Aristophanes, (Acharn. act 1, scene 3,) where a Greek has attempted to 

 t>ive a Persian oration. See also Gibbon's Roman Empire, chap, liii, 

 note 54, for a curious example of the way in which foreign languages 

 li..ve. been disfigured when it has been attempted to represent them in a 

 totally different tongue. 



VOL. II. X 



