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Rh might have elapsed; and notwithstanding the distinction of languages existing, it will be difficult to suppose that they continued entirely unaltered. It is not improbable that, in the course of those 200 years, the transition natural in such cases would have been begun, of two distinct languages amalgamating to form a third, and thus that the verbs might be mainly derived from the language of the mothers, and the nouns from the language of the fathers. Since Le Breton's work of 1666, I am not aware of any investigation made of the Carib language, until the translation into it of St. Matthew's Gospel by the Rev. Mr. Henderson, of Belize, Honduras, in 1847. I had the pleasure of forming the acquaintance of this estimable clergyman in 1851, at Belize, and he then shewed me a vocabulary of the Carib language as now spoken, which he led me to hope would have been printed before now. Finding this has not been accomplished, I have been obliged to confine my inquiries into the present state of the language to that translation of St. Matthew, and from it obtain a full confirmation of my suppositions. My only surprise is, that even now, after the lapse of about 400 years, so much proof still remains of the origin of this people. It is to their probable origin, therefore, that I have now to ask your attention.

Respecting this, Rochefort seems not to have had a very clear opinion. He acknowledges that their own traditions generally referred to what he supposes to have been South America, but he had learned, from his friend Mr. Brigstock, a confused history of their having been a people driven from a northern country, which he concluded to have been Florida, by some Indians whom he calls Apalachians. That there might have been some such outcasts from Florida we have no reason to dispute; but neither have we any good ground to conclude they afterwards became the people known as the Caribs. Robertson, and other writers, have followed P. Martyr in ascribing their origin to South America, where many powerful tribes of their nation certainly were found along the coast from the Orinoco to Essequibo, and throughout the whole province of Surinam to Brazil. If they had been driven away from Florida by a stronger people they could scarcely have settled down in South America and the islands in such numbers as they were, and there was no nation found in Florida that could be supposed to have been strong enough to have driven them away. But further, if they had been driven away from Florida, it is most natural to suppose that they would have been found on the islands near Florida and to the north of Cuba and Hispaniola. But