We

excites them to break their natural silence. observed the same volubility of tongue in the missions of Spanish Guiana, and among the Caribs of the lower Orinoco, of which the language is singularly rich and sonorous.

* Gilij, an Italian missionary, who resided eighteen years among the nations of the Orinoco, and became master of their languages, published three octavo volumes at Rome, in 17801-2, which he entitled Saggio di Storia Americana. In these volumes there is much information with regard to the Indians, particularly those of the Orinoco. From the samples which he gives of their languages, some of them would seem to be remarkably expressive, as well as sonorous, and form in the latter respect a singular contrast to those of Mexico. All the words of the Orinochese languages, he says, constantly end in vowels, and none of these languages are difficult to pronounce. But though they end in vowels, they have nothing of the inarticulate appearance of the vowel languages of the South Seas. What wilt thou eat to-morrow? is thus expressed in the Maipurese language: Nunaunari iti pare peccari upie? The following will serve to show the expressiveness of the Maipurese language: one who has no father, one who has no mother, one who has no wife, one who has no children: Macchivacaneteni, matuteni, maanituteni, maaniteni.

Here are a few vocables from the Tamanac and Maipurese languages, with the corresponding ones in English.

After examining the physical constitution and intellectual faculties of the Indians, it remains for us to give a rapid survey of their social state. The history of the lower classes of a people is the relation of the events which, in creating at the same time a great inequality of fortune, enjoyment, and individual happiness, have gradually placed a part of the nation under the tutory and control of the other. We shall seek in vain this relation in the annals of history. They transmit to us the memory of the great political revolutions, wars, con

Gilij describes the nations of the Orinoco as libidinous, which sounds rather singularly applied to Indians; and he gives a very amusing account of their powers of minicry, and the manner in which they counterfeit the language and gestures of the missionaries, for the purpose of turning them into ridicule. One would think, almost, that the French nation had sitten for the following portrait of the Maipurese. "Generalmente adunque parlando, sou gli Orinochesi di genio allegro; ma sopra ogni altra nazione spiccano i Maipuri per l'affabilità e l'amorevolezza con cui trattono i forestieri. Quindi è l'amore che portan loro gli Europei tutti, che li conoscano. Non v' ha forse Indiani, che più si affaciano all umore di ognuno. Fanno delle amicizie con tutti, ed appena trovasi in Orinoco una nazione in cui non siavi qualche Maipure. La loro lingua siccome facilissima ad imparare, è divenuta tra gli Orinochesi una lingua di moda; e chi poco, chi mo'to, chi mediocremente, chi bene, la parlano quasi tutti. I Maipuri nondimeno (il che toglie loro un gran pregio) sono incostanti, poco schietti; e non tanto internamente buoni, quanto per l'innata loro civiltà compajono agli altri. Vol. ii. p. 43.

Father Gumilla speaks highly of the state of music among the tribes of the Orinoco. Trans.

quests, and the other scourges which have afflicted humanity; but they inform us nothing of the more or less deplorable lot of the poorest and most numerous class of society. The cultivator enjoys freely, only in a very small part of Europe, the fruits of his labour; and we are forced to own that this civil liberty is not so much the result of an advanced civilization, as the effect of those violent crises during which one class or one state has taken advantage of the dissensions of the other. The true perfection of social institutions depends no doubt on information and intellectual cultivation; but the concatenation of the springs which move a state is such, that in one part of the nation this cultivation may make a very remarkable progress without the situation of the lower orders becoming more improved. Almost the whole north of Europe confirms this sad experience. There are countries there, where, notwithstanding the boasted civilization of the higher classes of society, the peasant still lives in the same degradation under which he groaned three or four centuries ago. We should think higher, perhaps, of the situation of the Indians were we to compare it with that of the peasants of Courland, Russia, and a great part of the north of Germany.

The Indians whom we see scattered throughout the cities, and spread especially over the plains of Mexico, whose number (without including those of mixed blood) amounts to two millions and a

half, are either descendants of the old peasantry, or the remains of a few great Indian families, who, disdaining alliance with the Spanish conquerors, preferred rather to cultivate with their hands the fields which were formerly cultivated for them by their vassals. This diversity has a sensible influence on the political state of the natives, and divides them into tributary and noble or cacique Indians. The latter, by the Spanish laws, ought to participate in the privileges of the Castilian nobility. But in their present situation this is merely an illusory advantage. It is now difficult to distinguish, from their exterior, the caciques from those Indians whose ancestors in the time of Montezuma II. constituted the lower cast of the Mexican nation. The noble, from the simplicity of his dress and mode of living, and from the aspect of misery which he loves to exhibit, is easily confounded with the tributary Indian. The latter shows to the former a respect which indicates the distance prescribed by the ancient constitutions of the Aztec hierarchy: The families who enjoy the hereditary rights of Cacicasgo, far from protecting the tributary cast of the natives, more frequently abuse their power and their influence. Exercising the magistracy in the Indian villages, they levy the capitation tax: they not only delight in becoming the instruments of the oppressions of the whites; but they also make use of their power and authority to extort small sums for their own ad

vantage. Well informed intendants, who have bestowed much attention for a long time to the detail of this Indian administration, assured me that the oppressions of the cacique, bore very heavy on the tributary Indians. In the same manner, in m ny parts of Europe where the Jews are still deprived. of the rights of naturalization, the rabbins oppress the members of the community confided. to them. Moreover, the Aztec nobility display the same vulgarity of manners, and the same want of civilization with the lower Indians. They remain, as it were, in the same state of insulation ; and examples of native Mexicans, enjoying the Cacicasgo, following the sword or the law are infinitely rare. We find more Indian, in ecclesiastical functi ns, particularly in that of parish priest the solitude of the convent appears only to have attractions for the young Indian girls.

When the Spaniar is made the conquest of Mexico, they found the people in that state of abject submission and poverty which every where accompanies despotism and feudality. The emperor, princes, nobility, and clergy (the teopixqui), alone possessed the most fertil lands; the governors of provinces indu' ged with impun ty in the most severe ex ctions; and the cultivator was every where degraded. The highways, as we have already observed, swarmed with mendicants; and the want. of large qua rupeds forced thousands of Indians to perform the functions of beasts of burden, and