828 MIGRATION OF THE BOOTS OF WOODS. 



The American words are written according to the Spanish orthogiaphy. 

 I would not change the orthography of the Nootka word onulszth, taken 

 from Cook's Voyages, to show how much Volney's idea of introducing 

 an uniform notation of sounds is worthy of attention, if not applied to 

 the languages of the East written without vowels. In onuhzth there are 

 four signs for one single consonant. We have already seen that Ame- 

 rican nations, speaking languages of a very different structure, call the 

 sun by the same name ; that the moon is sometimes called sleeping sun, 

 sun of night, light of night; and that sometimes the two orbs have the 

 same denomination. These examples are taken from the Guarany, the 

 Omagua, Shawanese, Miami, Maco, and Ojibbeway idioms. Thus in the 

 Old World, the sun and moon are denoted in Arabic by niryn, the 

 luminaries;' thus, in Persian, the most common words, afitab and 

 chorschid, are compounds. By the migration of tribes from Asia to 

 America, and from America to Asia, a certain number of roots have 

 passed from one language into others ; and these roots have been trans- 

 ported, like the fragments of a shipwreck, far from the coast, into the 

 islands. (Sun, in New England, kone ; in Tschagatai, koun; in Yakout, 

 kouini. Star, in Huastec, ot; in Mongol, oddon; in Aztec, citlal, citl, 

 in Persian, sitareh. House, in Aztec, calli ; in Wogoul, kualla or kolla. 

 Water, in Aztec, atel (itels, a river, in Vilela) ; in Mongol, Tscheremiss, 

 and Tschouvass, atl, atelch, etel, or idel. Stone, in Caribbee, tebou ; in 

 the Lesgian of Caucasus, teb; in Aztec, tepetl; in Turkish, tepe. Food, 

 in Quichua, micunnan; in Malay, macannon. Boat, in Haytian, canoa ; 

 in Ayno, cahani ; in Greenlandish, kayak ; in Turkish, kayik ; in 

 Samoyiede, kayouk ; in the Germanic tongues, kahn.} But we must 

 distinguish from these foreign elements what belongs fundamentally 

 to the American idioms themselves. Such is the effect of time, and 

 communication among nations, that the mixture with an heterogenous 

 language has not only an influence upon roots, but most frequently ends 

 by modifying and denaturalizing grammatical forms. " When a language 

 resists a regular analysis," observes William von Humboldt, in his con- 

 siderations on the Mexican, Cora, Totonac, and Tarahumar tongues, " we 

 may suspect some mixture, some foreign influence ; for the faculties of 

 man, which are, as we may say, reflected in the structure of languages. 

 and in their grammatical forms, act constantly in a regular and uniform 

 manner. " 



