22 



forms (in the genders applied to the three per- 

 sons of the verb, the reduplications, the frequen- 

 tatives, the duals) ; it will appear highly as- 

 tonishing, to find a uniform tendency in the 

 developement of the understanding, and lan- 

 guage among so considerable a portion of the 

 human race. 



We have just seen, that the dialect of the 

 Caribbee women, in the West India islands, 

 contained the vestiges of a language that was 

 extinct. What was that language? Of this 

 we are ignorant. Some writers have thought, 

 that it might be that of the Ygneris, or primi- 

 tive inhabitants of the Caribbee islands ; others 

 have perceived in it some resemblance to the 

 ancient idiom of Cuba, or to those of the Arua- 

 cas, and the Apalachites in Florida # : but 

 these hypotheses are all founded on a very im- 

 perfect knowledge of the idioms, which it has 

 been attempted to compare. 



In reading with attention the Spanish authors 

 of the sixteenth century, we see, that the Caribbee 

 nations then extended over eighteen or nine- 

 teen degrees of latitude, from the Virgin islands 

 on the east of Portorico to the mouths of the 



* Labat, Voy. y vol. vi, p. 129. Rochefort, p. 326. Bibl. 

 Univ., 1817, p. 355. Is the word Igneris (Iyeris ?) a cor- 

 ruption of Eyeris, which, as we have just seen, signifies man 

 in the dialect of the Caribbee women } This employment of 

 the word man is very common in ethnographic names. 



