DIFFICULTY IS COUSTISG. 
311 
aflinn or deny w haiever the monks pleased : and that wily 
civility, to which the least cultivated Indian is no stranger, 
induced them sometimes to give to their answers the turn 
that seemed to be suggested by our questions. Travellers 
cannot be enough on their guard against this officious assent, 
when they seek to confirm their own opinions by the testi- 
mony of the natives. To put an Indian alcalde to the proof, 
I asked him one day, whether he did not think the little 
river of Caripe, which issues from the cavern of the Guacharo, 
returned into it on the opposite side by some unknown 
entrance, after having ascended the slope of the mountain. 
The Indian seemed gravely to reflect on the subject, and then 
answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis : “ How else, 
if it were not so, would there always be water in the bed of 
the river at the mouth of the cavern ?” 
The Chaymas are very dull in comprehending anythin c 
relating to numerical facts. I never knew one of' these 
oeople who might not have been made to say that he was 
either eighteen or sixty years of age. Mr. Marsden ob- 
served the same peculiarity iu the Malays of Sumatra, 
though they have been civilized more than five centuries. 
The Ohayuia language contains words which express pretty 
large numbers, yet few Indians know how to apply them ; 
and having felt, from their intercourse with the mission- 
aries, the necessity of so doing, the more intelligent among 
them count in Spanish, hut apparently with great effort 
of mind, as far as thirty, or perhaps fifty. The same per- 
sons, however, cannot count in the Chaynia language be- 
yond five or six. It is natural that they should employ 
iu preference the words of a language in which they have 
been taught the series of units and tens. Since learned 
Europeans have not disdained to study the structure of the 
idioms of America with the same care as they study those 
of the Semitic languages, and of the Greek and Latin, they 
no longer attribute to the imperfection of a language, what 
belongs to the rudeness of the nation. It is acknowledged, 
that almost everywhere tho Indian idioms display greater 
richness, and more delicate gradations, than might be sup- 
posed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they 
are spoken. 1 am far from placing the languages of the New 
World in the same rank with the finest languages of Asia 
