INDIAN HOME LIFE. I03 
day is rare indeed. In counting, they cannot ex- 
press themselves above twenty, and then only by 
means of the fingers and toes. Among the Sem- 
inoles of Florida I found a system of numeration 
perfect up to one thousand. Their pronunciation is 
soft and agreeable, and their language abounds in 
those figurative expressions which make the speech of 
our aboriginal tribes so interesting. 
Like the northern Indians, they use the expression 
moon for month: xzéo-z0, moon, and kd-t7, month, 
meaning the same. My wife is “my heart”; a boy 
is a little man; an idiot, a person without light, or 
unillumined; the fingers are the little ones, or the 
babes, of the hands; the rainbow is God’s plume. To 
signify that a thing is lost, they say itis dead. Their 
first white visitors they styled “children of the sea,” 
because they came to them in ships from over 
the sea. 
Though different writers have sought to prove by 
comparative vocabularies affinity between the Carib 
and the Jew and the Tartar, it has not been con- 
clusively proven that this people descended from 
either. There is, however, whatever the origin of 
the language, a striking significance in their desig- 
nating appellation — Carib, or Cannibal, which are 
epithets referring to valor and strength. 
We have seen that they received this name from 
Columbus, or his associates, who had heard it as 
applied to them by the inhabitants of Hispaniola, the 
year previous to the discovery of the Caribbees. 
Humboldt relates that the Caribs of South America 
called themselves Carina, Calina, Callinago, Caribi; 
and that the name Carib is derived from Calina and 
