Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/85

Rh have been made by modern writers of eminence as to an intermediate state between gesture-language and word-language, which deserve careful examination.

In Ethiopia, across the desert, says the geographer Pomponius Mela, there dwell dumb people, and such as use gestures instead of language; others, whose tongues give no sound; others, who have no tongues (muti populi, et quibus pro eloquio nutus est; alii sine sono linguæ; alii sine linguis, etc.). Pliny gives much the same account. Some of these Ethiopian tribes are said to have no noses, some no upper lips, some no tongues. Some have for their language nods and gestures (quibusdam pro sermone nutus motusque membrorum est).

To go thoroughly into the discussion of these stories would require an investigation of the whole subject of the legends of monstrous tribes; but an off-hand rationalizing explanation may be sufficient here. The frequent use of the gesture-language by savage tribes in intercourse with strangers may combine with the very common opinion of uneducated men that the talk of foreigners is not real speech at all, but a kind of inarticulate chirping, barking, or grunting. Moreover, from using the words "speechless," "tongueless," with the sense of "foreigner," "barbarian," and talking of tribes who have no tongue (no lingo, as our sailors would say), to the point-blank statement that there are races of men without speech and without tongues, is a transition quite in the spirit of mythology.

In modern times we hear little of dumb races, at least from authors worthy of credit; but we find a number of accounts of people occupying as it were a half-way house between the mythic dumb nations and ourselves, and having a speech so imperfect that even if talking of ordinary matters they have to eke it out by gestures. To begin in the last century, Lord Monboddo says that a certain Dr. Peter Greenhill told him that there was a nation east of Cape Palm as in Africa, who could not understand one another in the dark, and had to supply the wants of their language by gestures. Had Lord Monboddo