274 



islands and to the coasts of Cumana and Pari a. 

 They were not satisfied with retaining these 

 words borrowed from the Haitians, but con- 

 tributed also to spread them all over America, 

 at a period when the language of Haiti was 

 already a dead language, and among nations 

 who were ignorant even of the existence of the 

 West India Islands. Some words, which are 

 daily made use of in the Spanish colonies, are 

 attributed erroneously to the Haitians. Banana 

 is from the Chaconese, the Mbaja language; 

 arepa (bread of manioc, or of the jatropha ma~ 

 nihot) and guayuco (an apron, perizornaj, are 

 Caribbee : curiara (a very long boat) is Tama- 

 nack : chinchorro (a hammock), and tutuma 

 (the fruit of the crescentia cujete, or a vessel to 

 contain a liquid), are Chayma words. 



I have dwelt a long time on considerations 

 respecting the American tongues, because in 

 analyzing them for the first time in this work, 

 I wished that the interest of this kind of re- 

 search should be deeply felt. This interest is 

 analogous to that inspired by the monuments 



and the table-land of Bogota (Saggio, vol. iii, p. 228. See 

 also above, vol. ii, p, 252, of the present work). How ma- 

 ny Celtic and German words would not Julius Caesar and 

 Tacitus have handed down to us, if the productions of the 

 northern countries visited by the Romans had differed as 

 much from the Italian and Roman, as those of equinoxial 

 America ! 



