1 



247 



verb, an artificial industry to indicate before 

 hand, either by inflexion of the personal pro- 

 nouns, which form the terminations of the verb, 

 or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the 

 relation of it's object and it's subject, and to 

 distinguish whether the object be animate or 

 inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine 

 gender, simple or in complex number. It is 

 on account of this general analogy of structure, 

 it is because American languages, which have 

 no word in common (the Mexican, for instance, 

 and the Qquichua), resemble each other by 

 their organization, and form complete contrasts 

 with the languages of Latin Europe, that the 

 Indians of the Missions familiarize themselves 

 more easily with an American idiom, than with 

 that of the metropolis. In the forests of the 

 Oroonoko I have heard the rudest Indians speak 

 two or three tongues. Savages of different na- 

 tions often communicate their ideas to each 

 other by an idiom, which is not their own. 



slight differences in the form of the verb, according to the 

 nature of the pronouns governed by it, is found in the old 

 world only in the Biscayan and Congo languages (Vater, 

 Mithrid., vol. iii, P. I. p. 218; P. II, p. 386 ; and P. Ill, 

 p. 442. Guillaume de Humboldt, De la Langue Basque, 

 p. 58.). Strange conformity in the structure of languages 

 on spots so distant, and among three races of men so differ- 

 ent, the white Cantabrians, the black Congoes, and the 

 copper-coloured Americans. 



