76 GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WOKD-LANGUAGE. 



gives mucli tlie same account. Some of these EtMopian tribes 

 are said to have no noses^ some no upper lips, some no tongues. 

 Some have for their language nods and gestures (quibusdam 

 pro sermone nutus motusque membrorum est).^ 



To go thoroughly into the discussion of these stories would 

 require an investigation of the whole subject of the legends of 

 monstrous tribes; but an off-hand rationalizing explanation 

 may be sufficient here. The frequent use of the gesture-lan- 

 guage by savage tribes in intercourse with strangers may com- 

 bine with the very common opinion of uneducated men that 

 the talk of foreigners is not real speech at all, but a kind of 

 inarticulate chirping, barking, or grunting. Moreover, from 

 using the words " speechless," " tongueless," with the sense 

 of "foreigner," "barbarian," and talking of tribes who have 

 no tongue {no lingo, as our sailors would say), to the point- 

 blank statement that there are races of men without speech 

 and without tongues, is a transition quite in the spirit of 

 mythology. 



In modern times we hear little of dumb races, at least from 

 authors worthy of credit ; but we find a number of accounts of 

 people occupying as it were a halfway house between the 

 mythic dumb nations and ourselves, and having a speech so 

 imperfect that even if talking of ordinary matters they have 

 to eke it out by gestures. To begin in the last century. Lord 

 Monboddo says that a certain Dr. Peter Greenhill told him that 

 there was a nation east of Cape Palmas in Africa, who could 

 not understand one another in the dark, and had to supply the 

 wants of their language by gestures.^ Had Lord Monboddo 

 been the only or the principal authority for stories of this class, 

 we might have left his half-languaged men to keep company 

 with his human apes and tailed men in the regions of my- 

 thology ; but in this matter it will be seen that, right or wrong, 

 he is in very good company. 



Describing the Puris and Coroados of Brazil, Spix and 

 Martins, having remarked that different tribes converse in 



' Plin. vi. 35. 



2 Lord Monboddo, ' Origin and Progress of Language,' 2ud ed.j Edinburgh, 

 1774, vol. i. p. 253. 



