Indians on the Amazon. 



317 



each having a different language ; even the scattered mem- 

 bers of the same tribe can not understand each other.* 

 This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the in- 

 flexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow 

 round of thought and life. When and where the Babel 

 existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi fam- 

 ily separated, we know not. We only know that though 

 different in words, these languages have the same gram- 

 matical construction. In more than one respect the poly- 

 glot American is antipodal to the Chinese. The language 

 of the former is richest in words, that of the latter the 

 poorest. The preposition follows the noun, and the verb 

 ends the sentence. Ancient Tupi is the basis of the Lin- 

 goa Geral, the infer-tribal tongue on the Middle Amazon. 

 The semi-civilized Ticunas, Mundurucus, etc., have one 

 costume — the men in trowsers and white cotton shirts, the 

 women in calico petticoats, with short, loose chemises, and 

 their hair held in a knot on the top of the head by a comb, 



usually of foreign make, 

 but sometimes made of 

 bamboo splinters. The 

 wild tribes north and 

 south go nearly or quite 

 nude, while those on the 

 western tributaries wear 

 cotton or bark togas or 

 ponchos. The habita- 

 tions are generally a 

 frame-work of poles, thatched with palm-leaves ; the walls 

 sometimes latticed and plastered with mud, and the furni- 

 ture chiefly hammocks and earthen vessels. 



Native Comb. 



* Authors compute in South America from 280 to 700 languages (Abbe' 

 Royo said 2000), of which four fifths are composed of idioms radically dis- 

 tinct. 



