168 
THE AMAZON AND MADEIRA RIVERS. 
traces of that narrow Spanish-Portuguesc system of destnictiou, which 
took only its own ego and the immediate si^an of time into considera- 
tion, must for ever disappear. In the United States, we may well 
wait patiently for the completion of this process, which draws to a 
close with the inflexihlc rigidity of a law of nature. There the waves 
of immigration already touch the foot of the Eocky Mountains. There 
the Avigwam is destroyed to make room for the railway station or the 
stieets of nascent cities, and Indian savagery and modern culture, 
unable to exist side by side, must daily come to bloody conflicts. But 
in the South American States, in Brazil especially, which owns pro- 
vinces, with a population of only 40,000, larger than Germauj^, all hands, 
be their number never so small, should be turned to account, j)arti- 
cularly as the bulk of European emigration is not likely to turn in 
that direction for the present. The association of the Brazilian Indians 
with useful communities in aldcameutos, on a larger scale, is also 
favom-ed by the consideration that their character, on the whole more 
gentle and peaceable than that of the North American Indians, does 
not oflfer insuperable obstacles to earnest and persevering attempts. 
M hat the speculating .spirit of the J esuits conceived and brought about, 
should we despair of achieving through the agency of a Government 
animated by higher vieAvs ? 
One of the chief difficulties of such an undertaking is, as ak-eady 
mentioned, the great number of South American idioms ; and it must 
be reckoned a capital idea of the Jesuits that their missionaries, instead 
of teachkig Spanish to their Indians — which would have turned tJud 
way the torrent of European adventure— did all they could to make 
the Guarani language, the richest and most flexible' of those idiom.s, 
the prevailing tongue. Though they may not have been quite suc- 
cessfvd, yet the Guarani has spread, through their labours, over an 
exceedingly wide range; and, to the present day, there are many 
Guarani ivords in the language of the ordinary population of Brazil 
(quite independently of their colour and descent), and at places Avhero 
Guarani was not the language of the autochthons. 
As to the language of the Caripunas, Maetius gives a short voca- 
bulary of it from which I take the following : — 
AVator, onipnmia. Head, mapo. 
WatoVlaU, smehu Uchnma. 
I5(n\, amnati. Knife, mane pavea. 
