poken at the Friendly Islands, is sufficiently
copious for all the ideas of the people; and we had many proofs of its
being easily adapted to all musical purposes, both in song and in
recitative, besides being harmonious enough in common conversation. Its
component parts, as far as our scanty acquaintance with it enabled us to
judge, are not numerous; and, in some of its rules, it agrees with other
known languages. As for instance, we could easily discern the several
degrees of comparison, as used in the Latin, but none of the inflections
of nouns and verbs.

[Footnote 192: See this vocabulary, at the end of vol. ii. of
Dalrymple's Collection of Voyages. And yet, though Tasman's people used
the words of this vocabulary in speaking to the natives of Tongataboo,
(his Amsterdam,) we are told, in the accounts of his voyage, that they
did not understand one another;--a circumstance worth observing, as it
shews how cautious we should be, upon the scanty evidence afforded by
such transient visits as Tasman's, and, indeed, as those of most of the
subsequent navigators of the Pacific Ocean, to found any argument about
the affinity, or want of affinity, of the languages of the different
islands. No one, now, will venture to say, that a Cocos man, and one of
Tongataboo, could not understand each other. Some of the words of Horn
Island, another of Schouten's discoveries, also belong to the dialect of
Tongataboo.--See Dalrymple, as above.--D.]

We were able to collect several hundreds of the words; and, amongst
these, are terms that express numbers as far as a hundred thousand,
beyond which they never would reckon. It is probable, indeed, that they
are not able to go farther; for, after having got thus far, we observed,
that they commonly used a word which expresses an indefinite number. A
short specimen, selected from the larger vocabulary, is here inserted,
with the corresponding words, of the same signification, as used at
Otaheite, on the opposite column; which, while it will give, as we may
say, ocular demonstration of their being dialects of the same language,
will, at the same time, point out the particular letters, by the
insertion, omission, or alteration of which, the variations of the two
dialects, from each other, have been effected.

It must be observed, however, that our vocabularies of this sort must
necessarily be liable to great mistakes. The ideas of those, from whom
we were to learn the words, were so different