242 



hers, but few Indians know how to employ 

 them ; and having felt from their intercourse 

 with the missionaries the necessity of so doing, 

 the more intelligent count in Spanish, with an 

 air that denotes a great effort of mind, as far 

 as thirty, or perhaps fifty. The same persons 

 do not count in the C hay ma language beyond 

 five or six. It is natural, that they should 

 employ in preference the words of a language, 

 in which they have been taught the series of 

 units and tens. Since the learned of Europe 

 have not disdained to study the structure of 

 the idioms of America, with the same care as 

 they study those of the Semitic languages, of 

 the Greek, and of the Latin, they no longer 

 attribute to the imperfection of a language what 

 belongs to the rudeness of the nation. It is 

 acknowledged, that almost every where the idi- 

 oms display greater richness, and more delicate 

 gradations, than might be supposed from the 

 uncultivated state of the people, by whom they 

 are spoken. I am far from placing the lan- 

 guages of the New World in the same rank 

 with the finest languages of Asia and Europe ; 

 but no one of them has a neater, more regular, 

 and simpler system of numeration, than the 

 Qquichua and the Azteck, which were spoken 

 in the great empires of Couzco and Anahuac. 

 Now is it right to assert, that in those languages 

 men do not count beyond four, because in vil~ 



