258 Obstacles to Learning Languages. 
stances: he will search for it in noliler things as soon as hisi ideas are 
.broadened, as soon as he becomes consciions of his talents and of the fact 
that the veneration, respect and, I might almost say, holy awe with 
which he regards the European is nothing more than the effect of the 
still unknown sensation of the former's spiritual superiority. Indians 
overcome this feeMng as soon as the latter become guilty of the weak- 
nesses to which they are themselves subject. 
595. Were I to turn now to their language there were certainly two 
obstacles which it A\ as not in my power to remove, that perhaps stood 
in the w^ay of my having anything in common with this obscure subject: 
these were the shoi'tness t»f my stay amongst tribes whose languages 
differ so repeatedly frojn oue another, and my want of all the scientific 
qualifications necessary for such en'quiries to bear good fruit and not 
to increase still further the confusion already ruling it. The manners 
and customs of the Guiana tribes show striking analogy with many 
Asiatic people, little or hardly anything with western ones. The same 
with their language. A folk that only possesses scanty traces of tradi- 
tion and myth, and no documents, the history of the Indians is a 
labyrinth, the thread is lost, and even philologists will find it hard to 
pick up again. What I am submitting here constitutes but grains 
of knowledge gathered duriug my intercourse with the aborigines, 
harely even a poor contribution for future reference, but perhaps an 
inducement for some scientifically trained man to fix the neglected 
and scattered stones together and form a structure that will put life 
into the hitherto desert area. Associated with the difficulties already 
mentioned is the almost practical impossibility of learning the language 
by enquiry, because one finds the Indians only for a short time willing 
to answer questions relative to the language. All queries involving 
its structure, its flexions, conjugation, etc., remain a blank to him : they 
carry him to an uncultivated field, he looks at the questioner mutely 
for some minutes, shakes his head, comes out with a "H'm" and, to 
<?ive -perforce but a. momentary reply, goes away. What I was able to 
coll^^ct concerning the lanp-uage consists only of a number of words 
which I will arrange in the appendix and a few quite general 
grammaticaT rules. 
596. I have already several times mentioned that it almost seemed 
as if Guiana possessed as many languages as it numbers tribes, of 
which only a few might be regarded as dialects of (one and the same 
tribal language : for the reasons just given, however, I cannot express any 
definite judgment. The radicals amongst some of the tribes naturally 
show siuiilarity not only of sound, but also of meaning, whilst in others 
again they are entirely different, with the result that some tribes do not 
understand one another, except by pantomime, as in intercourse with 
Europeans, which remains their only medium for mutual understand 
ing. However similar the autochthonous inhabitants of Guiana are 
in figure, features, inclination, habits and customs, the differences of 
language striking upon the ear must at least be all the more extra- 
ordinary. It might possibly be the ctfse that all the languages of the 
Guiana tril)es can be traced back to those of the Caribs, Arawaks, 
