359 



I have just given a list of more than 200 tribes spread 

 over a space a little larger than France ; these tribes believe 

 themselves to be at least as foreign to each other as the Eng- 

 lish,, the Danes, and the Germans. 1 compare expressly 

 the nations of Europe that belong to the same root ; for we 

 have often observed in this work, how much, in the dis- 

 persion, I had almost said in the great shipwreck of the 

 American nations, simple dialects have by degrees taken the 

 appearance of languages essentially different. The state of 

 the organs of the voice, the permutation of consonants, the 

 carelessness of pronunciation, render it difficult to recognize 

 the analogy of the roots. The researches of MM. Hecke- 

 welder and Duponceau, in North America, render it probable 

 that the tongues scattered heretofore over more than 120,000 

 square leagues, between the Alleghanies and the Rocky 

 Mountains, the lakes of Canada and the Caribbean sea, are 

 reduced to a very small number of roots, of which the Lenni- 

 Lenape (Delaware), the Iroquois, and the Floridian are the 

 most important. It may be enquired, whether among the 

 tribes of the Oroonoko of which we have given the nomen- 

 clature, and which, it is painful to relate, now comprehends 

 perhaps not 80,000 individuals, there exist 8 to 10 languages 

 different from each other, like the German, the Slavonian, 

 the Basque, and the Welsh ? This question can only be 

 solved by the study of the printed grammars which we owe 

 to the care of the missionaries. My brother M. William de 

 Humboldt, the sole Helenist who has acquired a profound 

 knowledge of the Sanscrit, the Semitic tongues, and almost 

 all the idioms of Europe, without excluding the Basque, the 

 Welsh, and theHungarian, has been employed for a great num- 

 ber of years on the whole of the languages of the new conti- 

 nent. He posesses more materials for this study than have 

 hitherto been collected, and the work in which he will soon 

 make known the tongues of the new continent, will spread 

 a new light on that important branch of our knowledge. 



