Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/159

Rh Scriptures, viz. the Gospels of Matthew and John, which were printed in 1850, and other portions now going through the press. From these I have made a Vocabulary and notes for a Grammar, which it will be unnecessary to continue as possibly Mr. Brett may favor us with a better one than I could put together, as well as a fuller Vocabulary than the time I could give the labor would allow me to do. I will only therefore give as an Appendix the words in Hakluyt, arranged by the side of their equivalents in the Arrawak of 1800 and 1850, the Carib of 1650 and the modern Carib of 1850, and the neighbouring languages of the Mayas and the Musquitos. I will only add that at least 13 of the words in Hakluyt as used in 1595 are identical with the present Arrawak, being those representing the Sun, the moon, fire, water, stone, hair, eye, hand, foot, a rope, a basket, gold, and a sword. The modem Carib I have taken from the Gospel of Saint Matthew translated by Mr. Henderson of Belize and the Vocabulary of the language he is now furnishing to this Society. But I regret to think that we have no record of their language as spoken in Guiana, where I have no doubt it would be less corruptly preserved than in Honduras. In the former country it is much mixed with Arrawak, though the two people still keep themselves very distinct from each other. In Honduras it seems to me to be an extremely corrupt jargon, as indeed we may conclude it must have necessarily become under the circumstances under which the Caribs came there. The great settlement, of this people originally was far to the South, and those now in Honduras were brought there under the orders of the British Government towards the end of the last Century. (See Martin's West Indies p. 285.) It was in 1796 that the British Government, finding the Carib Inhabitants of the British West India Islands too intractable for the planters, determined to remove them, and upwards of 5000 of them accordingly were taken to the island of Ruatan then a desert island. From this place they were afterwards, as Mr. Squier politely expresses it in his Notes on Central America, invited to the mainland by the Spanish authorities, who aided them in founding various establishments on the coast in the vicinity of Truxillo. (Squier's Central America p. 212.) Thus the original Carib, mixed up as it was with Arrawak, became still more a jargon in which we now find English, French and Spanish combinations ridiculously confounded. I refer as my authority to Mr. Henderson's translation of Saint Matthew's Gospel into this jargon. These Caribs have increased considerably since their deportation,