112 
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
and printed. Siich poor vocabularies cannot even be relied on to show 
whether a iangitage belongs to a particular family, for the very word 
which seems to prove this may be borrowed. Thus, in various African 
vocabularies, there appears the word sapun (or something similar) with 
the meaning of soap; but this is a Latin word which has spread far and 
wide from one country to another, and proves nothing as to original 
connexion between languages which have adopted it. While it is best 
not to under-rate the difficulty of collecting such information as to a 
little-known dialect as will be really of service to philology, it must be 
remembered that travellers still often have opportunities of preserving 
relics of languages, or at any rate special dialects, which are on the point 
of dying out unrecorded. Where no proper grammar and dictionary 
has been compiled, it is often possible to find some European or some 
interpreter fairly conversant with the language, with whose aid a voca¬ 
bulary may be written out and sentences analysed grammatically, which, 
when read over to intelligent natives and criticised by them, may be 
worked into good linguistic material. It is worth while to pay attention 
to native names of plants, minerals, &c., as well as of places and persons, 
for these are often terms carrying significant meaning. Thus ipecacuanha 
is stated by Martius to be i-pe-caa-guene } which in the Tupi language of 
Brazil, signifies “ the little wayside plant which makes vomit/’ 
Arts and Sciences .—The less civilised a nation is, the ruder are their 
tools and contrivances; but these are often worked with curious skill in 
getting excellent results with the roughest means. Stone implements 
have now been so supplanted by iron that they are not easily found 
in actual use. If a chance of seeing them occurs, as, for instance, 
among some Californian tribe, who still chip out arrow-heads of obsidian, 
it is well to get a lesson in the curious and difficult art of stone-imple¬ 
ment making. In general, tools and implements differing from those of 
the civilised world, even down to the pointed stick for root-digging and 
planting, are worth collecting, and to learn their use from a skilled hand 
often brings into view remarkable peculiarities. This is the case with 
many cudgel- or boomerang-like weapons thrown at game, slings or spear- 
throwers for hurling darts to greater distances than they can be sent by 
hand, blow-tubes for killing birds, and even the bow-and-arrow, which in 
northern Asia and America shows the ancient Scythian or Tartar form, 
having to be bent inside out to string it. Though fire is now practically 
