Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/92

80 with the general use of it, but only in a larger sense to denote the several families of mankind designated thus according to their color, objecting to the word if it is at all to be understood in the sense given it by some modern writers, as implying several distinct original creations of what they term "primitive men." In the first ages of mankind when their numbers were yet scanty, but their evil propensities for violence as virulent as they have ever since been, we may easily imagine that many families might wander from fear of their fellows or from other causes very far from all social communion with their kind, which families in the course of ages might grow up into nations of very strongly marked peculiar characteristics as regards manners institutions and language. The latter as the great connecting link by which we may trace the migrations of men in accordance with the precepts of our illustrious former President Dr. Prichard is certainly an essential object of our inquiry but one that may be modified by circumstances. When a large family of men has grown up into a large nation, so that their language has become widely diffused and handed down from one generation to another it may become almost an impossibility to alter it. But in the case of a small family or nation that may be absorbed in a larger, such a result we know has been of frequent occurrence in history. Again the same result may arise from natural causes. Moffat in his "Missionary Labors and Scenes in Southern Africa" observes of the wandering tribes there met with, that they are often compelled to traverse the wilds to a great distance from their villages. On such occasions fathers and mothers and all who can bear a burden often set out for weeks at a time, leaving the children to the care of two or more infirm people. The infant progeny romping and playing together, the children of nature through the livelong day, become habituated to a language of their own. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and thus from this infant Babel proceeds a dialect composed of a host of mongrel words and phrases joined together without rule, and in the course of a generation the entire character of the language is changed." This statement of a fact is so true to nature that we at once admit the probability of its occurrence, and thus may account for many dialects if not different languages existing among uncivilized tribes living separate by themselves, though no doubt of the same kindred origin. The more uncivilized we find a country the more decidedly distinct we find its dialects, and languages which thus grow up as it were from chance or caprice like weeds in a rank