168 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.^ 



How 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 ttie 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-M'ees 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-oufs — a name which 

 has now become general for all Frenchmen in the Southern 

 Pacific. 



