there are a few fables and poems in this idiom, and Touareg inscriptions graven on rocks have been discovered, with twenty-eight peculiar characters, evidently of Semitic origin, and composing perhaps the Numidian alphabet mentioned by Valerius and Maximus. Tamachek has still a written character, fairly regular in appearance, but destitute of signs for the vowels; it is necessary to know the language in order to be

able to read it.

The Ethiopian branch, Galla, Bedja, Saho, Dankali, and Somali, must not be confounded, it seems, with the decidedly Semitic idioms of Abyssinia, Tigre, Amharic, and others, which are connected through Ghez with Himyarite of the coast of Arabia. Although influenced by Semitism, the Ethiopian dialects (very little studied from the point of view of comparative philology), belong to the Libyan family by the use of the sign t for the feminine, which may be either a prefix or a suffix. We note, however, that the two tenses of Bedja and Saho are expressed in a manner which is purely Semitic. The one, the aorist, is indicated by the prefixing of the personal pronouns ; the other, the present, by the post-position of these pronouns. The same methods are employed, but indifferently, by Coptic, which uses auxiliaries to distinguish the tenses.

Coptic, extinct since the seventeenth century, but still in use as the sacred language of the Monothelite sect, had from the second to the eighth century a fairly rich literature, very precious to those who are attracted by the minutiae of Christian exegesis. It was, as the name indicates (ha-ka-ptah, ayνπтоS ; Guptos, Copt), the popular form of Pharaonic Egyptian, and it is through Coptic that Egyptologists have found

out how to decipher the annals of the Snefrou and the Rameses.

The discovery of ancient Egypt is one of the finest conquests of the century, and it is a French conquest. The essays of Scholtz and of Barthélemy presented only hypotheses which were hardly even ingenious (1775). We must look in the works of Champollion the younger, the first reader of the hieroglyphs (17901832), and of his successors Rosellini, Salvolini, Lepsius, Brugech, Rougé, Maspero, for the certain and established principles of decipherment. The reading has changed more than once; the syllabic, alphabetic, or ideographic character of the signs has had to be determined, and the hieroglyphs checked by the hieratic writings, which are more summary in form, and by the cursive or demotic, the instrument of the language of affairs and of common speech.

There were in Egypt, from a very early epoch, two languages, the one sacred, the other popular, which soon presented marked differences, of which the principal (Lepsius proves this from the Rosetta inscription) was the preference of the demotic form for prefixation. That which the priests wrote after the root or theme, pronominal signs, affixes of tense, number, and gender, the people preferred to place at the beginning of the word, as in the Bantu group.

The Egyptian language is very simple: a feminine of which the sign is t; a plural in u, ui; no cases. A syntax which rules that the verb shall occupy the first place in the sentence, followed by the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, and lastly the adverb, write I letter to you to-morrow; a formula which does not lend itself to eloquence or poetry, and which yet has sufficed for the emphatic proclamations of the

kings, for the precepts of a lofty morality, and for the religious and philosophical lucubrations preserved by the priests in the "Book of the Dead." Triumphal odes have also been found, romances, and even medical treatises, which make the joy of Egyptologists.

But the really important discovery is the probable relationship, now recognised by Fr. Müller and by Maspero, of the Libyan and Semitic languages. In the two groups there are the same pronouns, the same method of forming the plural by the addition of a termination. The two families must have separated at an epoch when their common language was at a very early stage of its development. The one came to a standstill, the other advanced towards the inflected state. But where were they together, and where did they part company? Did the Berbers come from Asia, or are the Semites a Mediterranean people, who, crossing the delta of the Nile, spread towards the Euphrates and into Arabia? The first opinion has in its favour the prejudice which considers Asia as the cradle of the human race, at least of the white and yellow races. But the second seems to derive some support from the data of pre-historic anthropology. The question is unsolved, and the field open to conjecture.

For the rest, everything is vague and obscure in the unknown past of Africa. We have endeavoured to present its probable phases; in the north a flux and reflux of white peoples, causing the Nubians to retreat upon the Bantus, and the Bantus upon the Bushmen and Hottentots. In the east, a Semitic invasion, mingling the languages and the races of the Gallas, the Somalis, and the Abyssinians, and determining the exodus of the Peuls across Bornou and

the Soudan as far as Senegambia. On the extreme west, a descent of the Moors or Berbers, adding to the confusion of the groups and idioms of Nigritia and Guinea. In the centre, a remnant of divers savage races, tall or dwarfish, black or chocolate, the Bongos, the Dinkas, Nouers, Niam-Niam, Akkas, pressed together pell-mell between the Nubians and the Peuls, between the Abyssinians, the Bantus of the lakes and of the Congo, and the Negroes of the Lower Niger and of Gaboun. A great civilisation in the valley of the Nile; semi-barbarism on the northern coasts, in the basin of the Niger, and on the south-eastern coast; everywhere else every shade and degree of moral and intellectual poverty, of a merely animal existence.

M

CHAPTER VI.

POLYSYNTHETIC LANGUAGES.

Persistence of Basque customs

The Basques-Complete isolation of the Basque or Uskara tongue— Incorporating or abbreviating character of this agglutinative idiom Origin of the Basques Songs of Altabiscar and of the Cantabri—The American races and idioms-Has America an indigenous race-Probable Asiatic origin of the successive strata of the population-Fanciful comparisons between the American religions and the Hindu or Egyptian beliefs-Table of races, general characteristics, and variety of the families of languages-Examples and decomposition of polysynthetic terms-Life and language of the Inuit or Esquimaux— Iroquois and Algonquin group-The plateau of Anahuac-Central America—Peru—General review of the agglutinative languages.

BEFORE leaving the Old World we must say a few words about a curious idiom which bears some resemblance to the American languages, and which is found quite isolated in a district of the Pyrenees, between the Pic d'Anie and Biarritz, between Pampeluna and Bilbao. This is Eskuara, Euskara, or Uskara, spoken in three French arrondissements (Bayonne, Oloron, Mauléon), and three Spanish provinces (Alava, Guipuzcoa, Biscaya). Uskara, which from the tenth century has been the wonder of the Gallo-Romans and Gallo-Franks, is simply an agglutinative language, at once poor and complex, like all the dialects belonging to the same class; poor by its vocabulary-omitting of course the words borrowed from Latin, Spanish, Arabic, and French-complex by the richness of its sounds, by the delicacy of its euphonic laws, by the