431 



while in the missions, intelligence, some love of 

 labour, and in particular a great facility in learn- 

 ing the Castilian language. The villages being 

 for the most part inhabited by three or four 

 tribes, who do not understand each other, a 

 foreign idiom, which is at the same time that of 

 the civil power, the language of the missionary, 

 aflords the advantage of more general means of 

 communication. I heard a Poignave Indian 

 conversing in Spanish with a Guahibo, though 

 both had come from their forests within three 

 months. They uttered a phrase every quarter 

 of an hour, prepared with difficulty, and in 

 which the gerund of the verb, no doubt accord- 

 ing to the grammatical turn of their own tongues, 

 was constantly employed. ( When I seeing Pa- 

 dre, Padre to me saying*; instead of, when 

 I saw the missionary, he said to me). I have 

 mentioned in another place, how wise it appear- 

 ed to me in the Jesuits, to generalize one of the 

 tongues of civilized America, for instance that 

 of the Peruvians "f-, and instruct the Indians in 

 an idiom, which is foreign to them in it's roots, 

 but not in it's structure and grammatical forms. 

 This was following the system, which the Incas, 

 or king-priests of Peru, had employed for ages 



* Quando io mirando Padre, Padre me diniendo. On adding 

 the verb substantive, it is almost the English turn of phrase, 

 J was going. 



+ The Qquichua language, lengua del Inga. 



