V 

 V 



S30 Mr. PicTcering on the OrtJiogra^Jiy of the 



learn any other, have so strangely disguised the proper appella- 

 tions of countries, cities, and rivers in Asia, that, without the 

 uidance of the sagacious and indefatigable M. D'Jlnville, it 

 would have been as troublesome to follow Alexander through the 

 Panjdb on the Ptolcmaick map of ^Agathodcemorif as actually to 

 travel over the same country in its present state of rudeness and 

 disorder."* 



The inconveniences and confusion, which "are here so strik- 



;ly described in the case of the JlsiaticTc 



arc now 



beginning to be experienced by writers upon the Languages 

 and History of the Indian nations of America. In this latter 

 case, however, we are relieved from one embarrassment, which 

 is felt in the case of the Asiatick tongues ; for in those, as 



is already a written character, and an established alpha. 



arrangement of the elementary sounds, which does not in 



every instance correspond with the order of our Rom;,n alpha- 



betic 



bet 



struggle in the mind, wi»en we 



gfr 



attempt to write Asiatick words in our letters, arisii 



natural desire which we feel to represent each Asiatick characte 



by one of our own, which occupies the same place in the alphabet 



list. But in the lan5u&s:es of the American I 



the first 



by which we may choose to represent 



d 



U 



the order of our own alpl 



»til within a few years past, indeed, "these neglected dia. 

 lects, like the devoted race of men, who have spoken them for so 

 many ages, and who have been stripped of almost every fragment of 



wLktvoU "n "" *^^ O'-thy ^Pliy of Asiatick words in Roman letters ; in Sk W. Jones'^ 



worKs, vol. 1. p. 175, 4to eclit. ; and m the Asiatic Jteseurches, vol. i. p. 1. 



-rJ 



