296 SOME LAWS OF PHONETIC CHANGE 



Khitan, fierce, warlike, indomitable, as many of their tribes have 

 proved themselves on mountain and plain, have never taken rank 

 among the masters of the sea. Their very passage to this Western 

 World has been the stepping stones of the Kurile and Aleutian 

 Isles, with land in sight for almost all the way. 



To return to language ; we look in vain in our Basque lexicons 

 for the compound words of the Iroquois tongue, but in Koriak, in 

 Kamtchatdale, and in Japanese, we discover, not indeed the precise 

 words, for a few centuries may suffice to alter these, but some of the 

 elements of which they are composed. Take, for instance, the 

 Iroquois word for silver. It is hwichtan-oron. I am not sufficiently 

 versed in ancient Iroquois to know the meaning of its component parts, 

 but there can be no doubt that the first of these, hwichtan, is the same 

 as wychtin in the Koriak word elnipel-wychtin, denoting the same 

 metal. An Iroquois word for the colour yellow is cheena-yuarle, 

 and (juarle is apparently the same word as karallo in the Kamtchat- 

 dale duchl-ka ratio, which means not yellow indeed but green, colours 

 not always distinguishable by savages, for the Koi'iak uses the same 

 term, nigil-tshachain, for both. Another Iroquois word for yellow is 

 hotgikkwa-rogon, of which the latter member, rogon, corresponds 

 with grachen in the distinctive Koriak term for yellow, nuutel- 

 grachen. We are on a surer foundation in regard to the Iroquois 

 words for red, two of which are otquech taroku and quwen-tarogon. 

 The first part of each word is a variation of the terms otweacha, 

 hotkwensa, blood. The Koriak red is nitshel-rachen, although nitshel 

 is sometimes used alone. The latter Koriak word does not seem to 

 denote blood. Still the rachen of nitshel-rachm, red, and the grachen 

 of nuntel-grachen, yellow, are doubtless variations of the Iroquois 

 rogon of hotgikkwa-rogon, yellow, and the tarogon of quwen-tarogon, 

 red. The explanation of these terms is found in the Japanese. One 

 of its words for red is chi-darake-no, literally, " smeared with blood," 

 for chi denotes " blood," and darake, or with the particle darake-no, 

 means "smeared with." Hence the Iroquois words for red, in which 

 we have already found the equivalents of the Japanese chi, blood, 

 plainly exhibit their Northern Asiatic origin, for taroku and tarogon 

 are the Japanese d<>rake and darake.no, as well as the rachen and 

 grachen of the Koriak. Taking the Japanese also as the more 

 correct form of the language, it follows that the Iroquois have been 



