344 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE. 
CHAPTER IX. 
Language. 
Tm e hypothesis I have met with, I think in Parsons's Remains of 
Japhet, that the confusion of languages at Babel was a visitation 
on the family of Ham only, which spread itself over Africa, is cer- 
tainly supported (considering the radical affinities which have been 
traced between the Arabic the Russ and the Greek, the Persian 
and the German, the Qquichua, or language of the Incas, and 
the Sanscrit, and many others*) by the variety of languages in 
Africa which cannot be assimilated in the least degree to each 
other, and which would, I think, resist the laborious ingenuity of 
the philologist. 
I have heard about half a dozen words in the Fantee, which 
might be said to be not unlike the same nouns in the Welsh lan- 
guage; and this is the only afiinity which has been imagined. 
Two words only in the Accra language have struck me as assimi- 
lating to those of any other, the conjunction " kay" (and), which 
* The eastern and western branch of this polar race, the Eskimoes and the Tschou- 
gazes, notwithstanding the enormous distance of 800 leagues which separates them, are 
united by the most intimate analogy of languages. This analogy extends, as has been re- 
cently proved in the most evident manner, even to the inhabitants of the north7east of Asia ; 
for the idiom of the Tschouktshes at the mouth of the Anadin has the same roots, as the 
language of the Eskimoes who inhabit the coast of America opposite to Europe. The 
Tschouktsches are the Eskimoes of Asia. Humbolt, P. N. v. 3, p. 291. 
