31G 
AXALOGT OF SOL'KilS. 
introducing their language with their sovereignty into the 
country of the Gauls, into Bcetica, and into the province of 
Africa. But the natives of these countries were not savages ; 
—they inhabited towns ; they were acquainted with the use of 
money; and they possessed institutions denoting a tolerably 
advanced state of cultivation. The allurement of commerce, 
and a long abode of the Homan legions, had promoted 
intercourse between them and their conquerors. We see, 
on the contrary, that the introduction of the languages of 
the mother-countries was met by obstacles almost innume- 
rable, wherever Carthaginian, Greek, or Eoman colonies 
were established on coasts entirely barbarous. In every 
age, and in every climate, the first impulse of the savage is 
to shun the civilized man. 
The language of the Chayma Indians was less agreeable 
to my ear than the Caribbee, the Salive, and other languages 
of the Orinoco. It has fewer sonorous terminations°in ac- 
cented vowels. We are struck with the frequent repetition 
ot the syllables ffvaz, ex, puec, and pur. These terminations 
are derived in part from the inflexion of the verb to he. and 
from certain prepositions, which are added at the ends of 
words, and which, according to the genius of the American 
idioms, are incorporated with them. It would be wrong to 
attribute this harshness of sound to the abode of the Chay- 
mas in the mountains. They are strangers to that temprate 
climate. They have been led thither by the missionaries ; 
and it is well known that, like all the inhabitants of’ warm 
regions, they at first dreaded what they called the cold of 
Canpe. I employed myself, with M. Bonpland, during out- 
abode at the hospital of the Capuchins, in forming a small 
catalogue of Chayma words. I am aware that languages 
are much more strongly characterised by their structure and 
grammatical forms than by the analogy of their sounds and 
of their roots; and that the analogy of sounds is sometimes 
the light-haired Germanic nations ; and though the Druid caste recalls 
to our minds one of the institutions of the Ganges, this does not demon- 
strate that the idiom of the Celts b longs, like that of the nations of 
Odin, to a branch of the Indo-Pelasgic languages. From analogy of 
structure and ot loots, the l,atiu ought to have penetrated more easilv 
on the other side of the Danube, than into Gaul; but an uncultivated 
state, joined to great moral inflexibility, probably opposed its introduc- 
tion among the Germaj it nations. 
