266 



guages have an analogy with the Hebrew, and 

 the Biscayan. Every where, at the Convent of 

 Caripe as well as at the Oroonoko, in Peru as 

 in Mexico, I heard this idea announced ; and 

 particularly by monks who had some vague 

 notions of the Semitic languages. Did mo- 

 tives which were thought to be interesting to 

 religion cause so extraordinary a theory to be 

 established ? In the north of America, among 

 the Chactaws and the Chickasaws, travellers 

 somewhat credulous have heard the Hallelu- 

 jah* of the Hebrews sung ; as, according to the 

 pundits, the three sacred words of the mys- 

 teries of the Eleusis ^ (konx ompax) resound still 

 in the Indies. I do not suspect, that the na- 

 tions of Latin Europe have called whatever has 

 a foreign physiognomy Hebrew or Biscayan, as 

 for a long time all those monuments were 

 called Egyptian, which were not in the Grecian 

 or Roman style. I rather think, that the gram- 

 matical system of the American idioms has 

 confirmed the missionaries of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury in their ideas respecting the Asiatic origin 

 of the nations of the New World. The tedious 

 compilation of Father Garcia, Tratado del Ori- 



* L'Escarbot, Charlevoix, and even Adair (Hist, of the 

 American Indians, 1775, p. 15 — 220). 



+ Asiat. Res., Vol. v, p. 231. Ouvaroff, on the Eleusi- 

 nian Mysteries, 1816, p. 27 and 115. 



/ 



