INDIAN HOME LIFE. TIoI 
menced by the man with a B, by the woman was 
begun with an JV. 
Ithough I could surmise the cause of this discrep- 
ancy, which in some instances was even more marked, 
I could not be satisfied to trust to my own inexperi- 
enced reasoning, but turned to the greatest authority 
upon any such subject in his day—the immortal 
Humboldt. Some light was thus afforded, for he had 
noticed the same peculiarity. “The contrast between 
the dialects of the sexes is so great that to explain it 
satisfactorily, we must refer to another cause (than 
difference in sex), and this may perhaps be found in 
the barbarous custom practiced by the Caribs, of kill- 
ing their male prisoners, and carrying the wives of 
the vanquished into captivity. When the Caribs made 
an irruption into the West Indies, they arrived there 
as a band of warriors, not as colonists accompanied 
by their families. The language of the female sex 
was formed by degrees, as the conquerors contracted 
alliances with the foreign women; it was composed 
of new elements, words distinct from the Carib words, 
which in the interior of the gyneczums were trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, but on which 
the structure, the combinations, the grammatical 
forms of the language of the men, exercised an 
influence.” 
Seeking farther, I found in an ancient volume, a 
French work published in 1658, conclusive evidence 
in place of what was with Humboldt mostly conjecture. 
It says: The Caribs have an original language 
peculiar to them alone, like any other nation, which 
they speak among themselves. The men have many 
peculiar expressions which the women understand very 
