164 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cu. vir 
fathom and ten fathoms are the only terms I have heard 
among them. By these they convey the size of anything, 
as a house, a boat, depth of the sea, etc, but when they 
speak of distances from one place to another they have no 
way of making themselves understood but by the number of 
days it takes them in their canoes to go the distance. 
Their language appeared to me to be very soft and tuneful; 
it abounds in vowels, and was easily pronounced by us, while 
ours was to them absolutely impracticable. I instance par- 
ticularly my own name, which I took much pains to teach 
them and they to learn; after three days’ fruitless trial I 
was forced to select from their many attempts Zapane, the 
only one I had been able to get from them that had the 
least similitude to it. Spanish or Italian words they pro- 
nounced with ease, provided they ended with a vowel, for 
few or none of theirs end with a consonant. 
I cannot say that I am sufficiently acquainted with it to 
pronounce whether it is copious or not; in one respect, 
however, it is beyond measure inferior to all European 
languages, and that is in its almost total want of inflection 
both of nouns and verbs, few or none of the former having 
more than one case or the latter one tense. Notwithstand- 
ing this want, however, we found it very easy to make 
ourselves understood in matters of common necessaries, how- 
ever paradoxical it may appear to an European. 
They have certain suffixes and make very frequent use 
of them. This puzzled us at first very much, though they 
are but few in number. An instance or two may be 
necessary to make myself understood, as they do not exist 
in any modern European language. One asks another 
“ Harre nea ?” “ Where are you going?” The other answers 
“ Tvahinera,” “To my wives,” on which the first questioning 
him still further “Ivahinera ?” “To your wives?” is answered 
“ Ivahinereiaa,” “Yes, I am going to my wives.” Here the 
suffixes era and eiaa save several words to both parties. 
From the vocabularies given in Le Maire’s voyage (see 
Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, tom. i. p. 410°) 
” By C. de Brosse, 1756. 
