328 
TBANSLATXONS TBOil TIIEOCIUTUS. 
is composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. This 
compound signifies ‘ the quality (met) of a subject ( reph ), 
which mates (er) the thing which is (pet), evil (ou).’ Never- 
theless the Coptic language has had its literature, like the 
Chinese, the roots of which, far from being aggregated, 
scarcely approach each other without immediate contact. 
We must admit that nations once roused from their le- 
thargy, and tending towards civilization, find in the most 
uncouth languages the secret of expressing with clearness 
the conceptions of the mind, and of painting the emotions 
of the soul. Don Juan de la Rea, a highly estimable man, 
who perished in the sanguinary revolutions of Quito, imi- 
tated with graceful simplicity some Idyls of Theocritus in 
t he language of the Incas ; and I have been assured, that, 
excepting treatises on science and philosophy, there is 
scarcely any work of modem literature that might not be 
translated into the Peruvian. 
The intimate connection established between the natives 
of the New World and the Spaniards since the conquest, have 
introduced a certain number of American words into the 
Castilian language. Some of these words express things not 
unknown before the discovery of the New World, and scarcely 
recal to our minds at present their barbarous origin.* Almost 
all belong to the language of the great Antilles, formerly 
termed the language of Hayti, of Quizqueja, or of Itis.f I 
shall confine myself' to citing the words maiz, tabaeo, canoa, 
batata, cacique, balsa, conuco, &c. When the Spaniards, after 
the year 1498, began to visit the mainland, they already had 
words J to designate the vegetable productions most useful 
genious reflexions of M. Silvestrc do Sacy, in tire Notice ties Recherches 
de M. Etienne Qualremere sur la Lillerature de l’ Egypt e. 
• For example savannah, and cannibal. 
f The word Itis, for Hayti or St. Domingo (Hispaniola), is found in 
the Itinerarium of Bishop Ceraldini (Rome, 1031.) — “ Quum Colonus 
Him insulam cerneret.” 
+ The following are Haytian words, in their real form, which have passed 
into the Castilian language since the end of the 15th ceutury. Many of 
them are not uninteresting to descriptive botany. AM (Capsicum bacca- 
tum), batata (Convolves batatas), bihao (Ileliconia biliai), caimito 
l^Cmysophyllum caimito), cahoba (Swietenia mahagoni), jucca and casabi 
v Jatropna manihot) ; the word casabi or cassava is employed only for thj 
bread made with the roots of the Jatropha (the name of the plant Jucca 
