246 



Oroonoko, and again from these torrid banks 

 to the frozen climate of the Straits of Ma- 

 gellan, mother tongues, entirely different with 

 regard to their roots, have, if we may use the 

 expression, the same physiognomy. Striking 

 analogies of grammatical construction are ac- 

 knowledged, not oniy in the more perfect lan- 

 guages, as that of the Incas, the Aymara, the 

 Guarani, the Mexican, and the Cora, but also 

 in languages extremely rude. Idioms, the roots 

 of which do not resemble each other more than 

 the roots of the Sclavonian and the Biscayan, 

 have those resemblances of internal mechanism, 

 which are found in the Sanscrit, the Persian, 

 the Greek, and the German languages. Al- 

 most every where in the New World we recog- 

 nize a multiplicity of forms and tenses * in the 



* In the Greenland language, for example, the multiplici- 

 ty of the pronouns governed by the verb produces twenty- 

 seven forms for every tense of the indicative mood. It is sur- 

 prising to find, among nations now ranking in the lowest 

 degree of civilization , that want of graduating the relations 

 of; time, that superabundance of modifications introduced 

 into the verb, to characterize the object. Mdtarpa, he takes 

 it away : mattarpet, thou takest it away : mattarpatit, he takes 

 it away from thee : mattarpagit, 1 take away from thee. 

 And in the preterit of the same verb, mettara, he has taken 

 it away : mattaratit, he has taken it away from thee. This 

 example from the Greenland language shows how the go- 

 verned and the personal prdnous form one compound, in the 

 American languages, with the radical of the verb. These 



