21 
guage of barbarous nations only, seem to 
be the wrecks of languages, once rich, 
flexible, and belonging to a more cultivat- 
ed state. We shall not enter into the dis- 
cussion, whether the primitive condition of 
the human race was rude and brutalized, 
or whether the savage hordes are descended 
from nations, whose intellectual faculties, 
and the languages which reflect those fa- 
culties, were equally developed ; we shall 
only observe, that the little which we know 
of the history of the Americans tends to 
prove, that the tribes, whose migrations 
have been directed from the north to the 
south, while yet dwelling near the polar 
regions, used various idioms which we find 
at present under the torrid zone. From 
this we may by analogy conclude, that 
the ramification, or rather, to use a term 
independent of every system, the multipli- 
city of languages is a very ancient pheno- 
menon. Perhaps those, which we call Ame- 
rican, belong no more to America than the 
