d by men to assist them in the
practice of numeration. We may observe in Homer, that Proteus counts his
sea-calves by fives and fives, that is, by his fingers. Several nations
in America have no other instruments of calculation. It was probably the
same in the primitive ages. It is another strong presumption of the
truth of what I now advance, that all civilized nations count by tens,
tens of tens, or _hundreds_, tens of hundreds, _thousands_, and so on;
still from ten to ten. We can discover no reason why the number ten
should be chosen rather than any other for the term of numeration,
except this primitive practice of counting by the fingers." The whole of
his observations on this subject are well worthy of minute
consideration. On such elements, the provision of nature, are founded
the most sublime and important sciences.--E.]

In measuring distance they are much more deficient than in computing
numbers, having but one term which answers to fathom; when they speak of
distances from place to place, they express it, like the Asiatics, by
the time that is required to pass it.

Their language is soft and melodious; it abounds with vowels, and we
easily learnt to pronounce it: But found it exceedingly difficult to
teach them to pronounce a single word of ours; probably not only from
its abounding in consonants, but from some peculiarity in its structure;
for Spanish and Italian words, if ending in a vowel, they pronounced
with great facility.

Whether it is copious, we were not sufficiently acquainted with it to
know; but it is certainly very imperfect, for it is almost totally
without inflexion, both of nouns and verbs. Few of the nouns have more
than one case, and few of the verbs more than one tense; yet we found no
great difficulty in making ourselves mutually understood, however
strange it may appear in speculation.

They have, however, certain _affixa_, which, though but few in number,
are very useful to them, and puzzled us extremely. One asks another,
_Harre hea?_ "Where are you going?" the other answers _Ivahinera_, "To
my wives;" upon which the first repeating the answer interrogatively,
"To your wives?" is answered, _Ivahinereira_; "Yes, I am going to my
wives." Here the suffixa _era_ and _eira_ save several words to both
parties.[25]

[Footnote 25: A table of some words of the language follows in the
copy.--It is omitted here, because an opportunity will occur, to give
one more full and correct; and it s