267 



gen de los Indios*, is a proof of this. The po- 

 sition of the possessive and personal pronouns 

 at the end of the noun and the verb, as well 

 as the numerous tenses of the latter, characte- 

 rize the Hebrew, and the other Semitic lan- 

 guages. The minds of some of the mission- 

 aries have been struck at finding the same 

 gradations in the American tongues. They 

 were ignorant, that the analogy of several scat- 

 tered features does not prove, that languages 

 belong to the same stock. 



It appears less astonishing, that men, who 

 are well acquainted with only two languages 

 extremely heterogeneous, the Castilian and the 

 Biscayan, should have found in the latter a 

 family likeness with the American languages. 

 The composition of words, the facility with 

 which the partial elements are detected, the 

 forms of the verb, and the different modifica- 

 tions which it undergoes according to the na- 

 ture of the object, may have caused and kept 

 up this illusion. But we repeat, an equal ten- 

 dency toward aggregation or incorporation does 

 not constitute an identity of origin. The fol- 

 lowing are examples of these relations of physi- 

 ognomy between the American and Biscayan 

 languages ; between idioms which differ en- 

 tirely in their roots. 



* Libro iii Cap. 7, § 3. 



