314 
THE GUEEHLAKD LANGUAGE. 
roots of the Sclavonic and the Biscayan, have those resem- 
blances of internal mechanism which are found in the 
Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the German languages. 
Almost everywhere in the New World we recognize a mul- 
tiplicity ot forms and tenses in the verb. 1 * an ingenious 
method ot indicating beforehand, either by inflexion of the 
personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb, 
or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation ot 
its object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the 
object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the 
feminine gender, simple or in complex number. It is on 
account ot' this general analogy of structure, — it is because 
American languages which have no words in common (for 
instance, the Mexican and the Quiclma), resemble eaeh 
other by their organization, and form complete contrasts to 
ihe languages of Latin Europe, that the Indians of the 
Missions familiarize themselves more easily with an Ameri- 
can idiom than with the Spanish. In the forests of the 
Orinoco I have seen Ihe rudest Indians speak two or three 
tongues. Savages of different nations often communicate 
their ideas to each other by an idiom not their own. 
It the system of the Jesuits had been followed, languages, 
which already occupy a vast extent of country, would have 
become almost general. In Terra Pinna and on the Orinoco, 
the Caribbean and the Tamanac alone would now be spoken ; 
* In the Greenland language, (or example, the multiplicity of the pro- 
nouns governed by the verb produces twenty-seven forms for every tense 
of the Indicative mood. It is surprising to find, among nations now- 
ranking in the lowest degree of civilization, this desire of graduating the 
relations of time, this superabundance of modifications introduced into 
tiie verb, to characterise the object. Matarpa, ha takes it away : mat- 
tarpet, thou taleest it away : mattarpatit, lie takes it awav from thee : 
mattarpagit , I take away from thee. And in the preterite' of the same 
verb, motion, lie has taken it away : maltaralit, lie has taken it away 
Irom thee, ibis example from the Greenland language shows how the 
governed and the personal pronouns form one compound, in the American 
languages, with the root of the verb. These slight differences in the 
form of the verb, according to the nature of the pronouns governed by it, 
is found in the Old World only in the IJiscayan and Congo languages 
(\ ater, M it hr id ate s . \t iliiam von Humboldt, On the llascjue Language). 
Strange conformity in the structure of languages on spots so distant, and 
among three races of men so different,— the white Catalonians, the black 
Congos, and the copper-coloured Americans ! 
