262 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



the vestern coast of America to keep up marine habits, nor are 

 there navigable rivers without bars, nor ports with safe places 

 for landing, but mostly everywhere an open, barren, sandy, or 

 rocky shore, beaten by a heavy surf.* Hence, on this side of 

 the Americas, if arrivals were not frequent, departures were 

 impossible, excepting in the more northern latitudes ; and that 

 these had been crossed and recrossed may be presumed, even 

 in case the assertion of Chinese scholars, that America was 

 known by the name of Fu-sang, and mentioned in the great 

 annals of the celestial empire, down to the fifth century of our 

 era, was a mistake.! The absence of Chinese forms of speech 

 on the American continent is not absolute, since the Othomi 

 language, spoken on the north of the valley of Mexico, is mon- 

 osyllabic. In Europe, we know the existing eastern tongues 

 of the Mongolic stock so imperfectly, that the work of Dr. 

 Pfitzmayer on the Japanese, though not directed towards the 

 spoken dialects of the more remote islands of the empire, yet 

 shows that the learned had, until lately, a very slight acquaint- 

 ance with it, and often mistook written Chinese for the Niphon 

 language. t Even the learned Chinese is more a lettered than 

 a nationally spoken vehicle of thought ; and in both the em- 

 pires, the written is partly different from the spoken tongues, 

 though the characters, being symbols instead of alphabetical 



* The surf in many places is as high and violent as at Madras, and 

 there being little wood procurable on the coast, the natives invented great 

 floats of inflated seal skins, which are still in use. They had formerly cat- 

 amarans, like those on the Coromandel coast. Models of these are 

 frequently found, with a double-bladed paddle, in the graves of the aborigi- 

 nal inhabitants ; but, from California to Peru, rafts, balzas, or janjadas, 

 served, capable of carrying great loads with safety, sailing with uncom- 

 mon speed. See Charnock's Marine Architecture, vol. i., p. 13. Ealza 

 wood is a very light kind of palm. 



t See C. Frederick Neumann and De Guines, though Klaproth sup- 

 poses Niphon or Japan is meant ; Japan, however, bears a different name 

 or names in the same innals. 



t A Dictionary in the so-called Tirokana characters, containing 40,000 

 words, is in preparatio.t by Dr. Pfitzmayer, at Vienna. 



