Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/127

Rh acknowledge our obligations to him for the information given us. Were all travellers to adopt the like plan of writing the "moral history" of the people they visit, and in advisable cases to favour us with like vocabularies, they would enhance the value of their works by enabling future philologists to trace the changes of languages, and perhaps even the origin of the people. M. Rochefort's work was translated into English by Mr. Davies, of Kidwally, printed in London in 1666, who, however, did not name his author, as he ought to have done, though acknowledging his own to have been translated from the French, so that the subject of which he treated became known to the literature of England as well as of France. Other writers had also referred to the Caribs, though not so fully. Rochefort refers to one whom I have not seen as an authority for some of his statements, as well as to a friend, an Englishman named Brigstock, of whom he speaks highly, as having lived much among the Indians, and acquired great knowledge of their customs and languages. From the latter he obtained a theory of the Caribs having proceeded originally from Florida, which, though evidently contrary to his own judgment, which assigned their origin to South America, he gives at great length, and with more particularity and respect than was due to it. Besides these, there were afterwards some other writers of lesser note, to one only of whom I think it necessary to refer here, Père Labat, who published, in 1724, an account of his residence among the Caribs. These writers all dwell on the certainly remarkable fact, that among the people the men spoke a language distinct from that spoken by the women. In all ages, and in a variety of different countries, we find, or trace, the circumstance of a chiefs, or court language, existing, distinct from that spoken by the people; as in China in the present day, and as in England under the Normans. In some other instances, also, we learn of distinctive words in a nation as used by each sex respectively; in America particularly, as noticed by Mr. Gallatin, and among the Basques in our immediate neighbourhood, as mentioned by Lecluse. But I am not aware of any nation being so distinctly marked out in this respect as the Caribs, whose history, therefore, seems to me deserving of particular attention. We can readily conceive the fact as necessarily ensuing from the kind of warfare ever carried on by barbarous nations, when the men who were overcome by an invading enemy were mercilessly slain, and the women alone preserved for the victors. If the women, then, possessed a different language, the pro-