34 



CHAPTER III. 



THE C ESTUEE r LANGUAGE— (continued) , 



There is another department of the gesture-language which 

 has reached nearly as high a development as that in use among 

 the deaf:-mutes. Men who do not know one another's language 

 are to each other as though they were dumb. Thus Sophocles 

 uses d<y\(oaqo<;, '■ tongueless/' for " barbarian," as contrasted 

 with " Greek ;" and the RussianSj to this day^ caU their neigh- 

 bours the Germans, "Njeme2;/' — that isj speechless, njemou 

 meaning dumb. When men who are thus dumb to one 

 another have to communicate without an interpreter, they 

 adopt all over the world the very same method of communi- 

 cation by signSj which is the natural language of the deaf- 

 mutes. 



Alexander von Humboldt has left on record, in the following 

 passage, his experiences of the gesture-language among the 

 Indians of the Orinoco, in districts where it often happens that 

 small, isolated tribes speak languages of which even their near- 

 est neighbours can hardly understand a word; — "''After you 

 leave my mission,' said the good monk of Uruana, 'you will 

 travel like mutes.' This prediction was almost accomplished ; 

 and, not to lose all the advantage that is to be had from inter- 

 course even with the most brutalized Indians, we have some- 

 times preferred the language of signs. As soon as the native 

 ^ees that you do not care to employ an interpreter, as soon as 

 you ask him direct questions, pointing the object out to him, 



