1812. 
TO A WRITTEN FORM. 
295 
means, on several occasions, a variableness was discovered in his 
pronunciation, which my imperfect knowledge of the idiom, has not 
yet enabled me to account for. 
Those, whose minds have been expanded by a European 
education, cannot readily conceive the stupidity, as they would call 
it, of savages, in every thing beyond the most simple ideas and the 
most uncompounded notions, either in moral or in physical know- 
ledge. But the fact is ; their life embraces so few incidents, their 
occupations, their thoughts, and their cares, are confined to so few 
objects, that their ideas must necessarily be equally few, and equally 
confined. I have sometimes been obliged to allow Muchunka to 
leave off the task, when he had scarcely given me a dozen words ; 
as it was evident that exertion of mind, or continued employment of 
the faculty of thinking, soon wore out his powers of reflection, and 
rendered him really incapable of paying any longer attention to the 
subject. On such occasions, he would betray by his listlessness and the 
vacancy of his countenance, that abstract questions of the plainest 
kind, soon exhausted all mental strength, and reduced him to the 
state of a child whose reason was yet dormant. He would then 
complain that his head began to ache ; and as it was useless to persist 
invito, Minerva, he always received immediately his dismissal for that 
day. 
When at a subsequent period, another native was employed in 
this business, I discovered in him nearly the same inability to sustain 
mental exertion ; and saw, therefore, the absurdity of seeking in 
their language for that which was not to be found in their ideas, — 
a mode of expressing those abstract qualities and virtues, and those 
higher operations of the intellectual power, which, perhaps, belong 
only to civilized society and to cultivated minds. 
The Bachapins call this language the Sichudna ; and as the in- 
convenience which would attend an increase of the bulk of this 
volume beyond its present size, compels me to omit the Dictionary 
or Vocabulary, together with various remarks on the language, and 
a fuller exposition of its structure, I have judged it not superfluous 
