particles, we might mistake two idioms nearly allied for
primarily separate languages.*
An instance of the greater activity of the imagination in the
formation of language is the practice, which, as Dr. Scouler
assures us, prevails among the coast tribes of the north-west,
of giving names to articles of European manufacture that are
introduced among them by traders. These names are not,
as among most rude nations, derived from the foreign terms.
for the same objects, but.they are descriptive epithets formed
in their own languages, and consequently different in the
idiom of each particular tribe. For example, the name for a
gimlet among the Chemesyans is a compound formed from
the noun, which means ‘ a hole ’ or ‘ aperture,’ and a verb
signifying e to make/ The compound name means 1 a hole-
maker/ In many languages spoken by other natives, in ,differ
rent parts of the world, we find the names of objects, introduced
by foreigners, derived from the idioms of the' people
who first made these objects known, and thus we trace the
terms for metals and grains and fruits from the idiom of some
trading nation. The American nations, by exercising their
inventive faculty, have thus deprived us of one opportunity of
tracing analogies which are elsewhere discernible. It is
evident that this habit must have had much influence in
diversifying their languages.
The combined influence of these causes may be supposed
to have occasioned the diversity of vocabulary so striking
among the American languages when taken in connexion
with their known grammatical analogy.
* Dr. Scouler on the Languages of the North-west Coast of America.
Geogr. Joum. 1842.
CHAPTER m
NATIONS? OF CENTRAL AMERICA.
S ection V.—’Geographical Sur&ep* o f 'Cehffiat''Aifierica7
No region of the eMrth ^pTes'entS to1 our view phenomena so
strikih'g1 and siiigular Tif all th eT o r^ ^o ^ liv i^ ‘and inanimate
nature as that "part of America which’is includenmetwepn the
nilWefh inW th<1 equindfctial line» The great mountairi
c'Miri which1 mayaBe* hdhsideiha^tHl' hdation5 a n d
su'ppbrt bif the’ whole* AmiMcan^OTtirient from5 the Arctic.
„Circle tb^apeTlorh, and 'which* in* tneuiorthern^as well as
the' feoirtherh’ *’pait‘" of‘ its lbng; CTa^^#M^lt?fmo^iihmiense’
parallel ridgdh* or Crests',* Including betw^on^lhem in -Wml
pl&bes^widd'and deep valleys, heroines ^un the Atuuue of
Mexico ar concentrated mass of mountaihs* FonnfBrMtTfCfg^nanja vast
b !M ^ rvi^#fefefisl'lh€5s' fWb 'gflfedt oceans' of the world, and defying
on onO side' the Tdrce'of the'Allah tic cfrrieriP?tishfng in
the gulfcstream against its and on the other tdwemrg?' O " O * ' . , -y . j / ag I i . . ; O
itbbve the wide expanse* o f the Pacific^'it suppmts Dloaq
table-land or mountain-plain, the elevation of which is said
to be.equal to that Of Monff’Cenis, Moiiht Sjf. Gotnard, or the
Great St. Bernard.1* Above the llwel of this plateau lofty
peaks- crown insulated * hills/forming W lt'^terb islets in the
midst of the aerial Ocean. Pour summits higher than the
rest near Xalapa and Cordova, called in the Aztec1-language
Popocatepetl or the Smoky Mountain, Iztaccihuatl or
the White Woman, Citlaltepetl, and Nauhcampatepetl, or
* M. de Humboldt’sPjplit. -Essay on New Spain, transl. voF. i,
f Ibid. p. 51.