stinctly said by all the historians to have been but very slightly
different from that of Cuba, a mere dialectic variation in accent being
observed.[15] Many fragments of this tongue are preserved in the
narratives of the early explorers, and it has been the theme for some
strange and wild theorizing among would-be philologists. Rafinesque
christened it the "Taino" language, and discovered it to be closely akin
to the "Pelasgic" of Europe.[16] The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg will
have it allied to the Maya, the old Norse or Scandinavian, the ancient
Coptic, and what not. Rafinesque and Jegor von Sivors[17] have made
vocabularies of it, but the former in so uncritical, and the latter in
so superficial a manner, that they are worse than useless.

Although it is said there were in Haiti two other tongues in the small
contiguous provinces of Macorix de arriba and Macorix de abajo, entirely
dissimilar from the _lengua universal_ and from each other, we are
justified in assuming that the prevalent tongue throughout the whole of
the Great Antilles and the Bahamas, was that most common in Haiti. I
have, therefore, perused with care all the early authorities who throw
any light upon the construction and vocabulary of this language, and
gathered from their pages the scattered information they contain. The
most valuable of these authorities are Peter Martyr de Angleria, who
speaks from conversations with natives brought to Spain by Columbus, on
his first voyage,[18] and who was himself, a fine linguist, and
Bartolome de las Casas. The latter came as a missionary to Haiti, a few
years after its discovery, was earnestly interested in the natives, and
to some extent acquainted with their language. Besides a few printed
works of small importance, Las Casas left two large and valuable works
in manuscript, the _Historia General de las Indias Occidentales_, and
the _Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentals_. A copy of these,
each in four large folio volumes, exists in the Library of Congress,
where I consulted them. They contain a vast amount of information
relating to the aborigines, especially the _Historia Apologetica_,
though much of the author's space is occupied with frivolous discussions
and idle comparisons.

In later times, the scholar who has most carefully examined the relics
of this ancient tongue, is Senor Don Estevan Richardo, a native of
Haiti, but who for many years resided in Cuba. His views are contained
in the pr