CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER IX.

LANGUAGES.

In all the North American territories bounded to the north and east by the Atlantic ocean, and to the south and west by the river Mississippi, and the possessions of the English Hudson’s Bay company, there appears to be but four principal languages, branching out, it is true, into various dialects, but all derived from one or the other of the four mother tongues, some of which extend even beyond the Mississippi, and perhaps, as far as the Rocky Mountains. These four languages are:

I. THE KARALIT.

This language is spoken by the inhabitants of Greenland and on the Continent by the Eskimaux Indians of the coast of Labrador. Its forms and principles are sufficiently known by means of the Grammar and Dictionary of the venerable Egede,[121] and the works of Bartholinus, Wœldike, Thornhallesen,[122] Cranz[123] and others. It is much cultivated by the Missionaries of the Society of the United Brethren, by whom we may expect to see its principles still further elucidated. It is in Greenland that begin those comprehensive grammatical forms which are said to characterise the languages of the vast American continent, as far as they are known, and are the more remarkable when contrasted with the simplicity of construction of the idioms spoken on the opposite European shores, in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and other countries. It appears evident from this single circumstance, that America did not receive its original population from Europe.