13 
nad-hol-a-wcill, is the third person, singular number, indi- 
cative mood, present tense, passive voice, “ he is fetched over 
the river in a canoe.”* 
Other specimens of complicated inflexions might be adduced 
from the Greenland language, in which the multiplicity of the 
pronouns governed by the verb produces twenty-seven forms 
for every tense of the indicative mood. Matarpa , he takes it 
away ; mattarpet, thou takest it away ; mattarpattit, he takes 
it away from thee; mattarpagit, I take it away from thee. In 
the preterite of the same verb, — mattara , he has taken it away ; 
mattaratit , he has taken it away from thee.f “ Almost every- 
where in the Hew World,” says Baron Humboldt, “we recog- 
nize a multiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb, an ingenious 
method of indicating beforehand, either by the inflexion of the 
personal pronouns which form the terminations of the verb, or 
by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relations of its 
object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the 
object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or feminine 
gender, simple or in complex number.” J It has been well 
observed that languages of this kind are more like those 
formed by philosophers in their closets than by savages. How, 
indeed, is it possible for us to assign even the most remote 
probability to the theory, that such refined and super-compli- 
cated tongues originated among wild and barbarous tribes ? 
Is it agreeable with common sense ? Would any man capable 
of analyzing language scientifically arrive at a conclusion like 
this, if he were left to an unbiassed judgment ? It is not that 
I wish to press my own conclusions beyond the proper limits 
of self-assurance ; but I venture to say that if these facts were 
placed before any jury of twelve unbiassed men, their unani- 
mous verdict would be, that language of this kind spoken by 
savages remains among them only as a bequest and relic of 
ancestral superiority. 
This conclusion is worth more than it seems ; for although, 
at first sight, there does not appear to be much connection 
between primeval man and even the most remote ancestors 
of the present American races ; yet, upon the principle that, 
in successive migrations of mankind from an original centre, 
that wave of population which went forth first would be pushed 
furthest, this people may not unlikely be among the best 
surviving specimens of the very earliest period of the world. 
That period we believe to have been an epoch of primary 
civilization ; by which term, however — let it be understood 
* Prichard, vol. v. p. 309. 
t Humboldt’s Travels , vol. i. p. 314. 
X Id. ib. 
