Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... and the coast towards Asia; this remarkable testimony being confirmed by the fact which I have already mentioned, that along the royal highway of fifteen hundred miles which the Incas of Peru had formed between the royal cities of Cuzco and Quito, they had erected store houses for provisions at every ten or twelve miles, which they designated by the Polynesian name for such buildings Taboo, or (Tambo, as the Spaniards pronounced the word) meaning that these buildings were consecrated for a particular purpose by the sanctions of religion. On one of my voyages to England, I happened to meet in London with a highly intelligent gentleman who had just then returned from British Guiana and the Demerara River, where lie had been residing for a series of years. Desirous as I was at the time of ascertaining how far • north the influence of the Polynesian character of the South American dialects might be felt, I requested the gentleman I allude to to give me a few specimens of words of the language of the Indo-Americans in the interior of that colony, as also a few names of places and objects on the Demerara River. The following, therefore, is a specimen of the language of the Warows, an IndoAmerican tribe of British Guiana, which I am confident the intelligent reader will admit bears a striking resemblance to the language of Polynesia. Like that language, the language of the Indians of Guiana is essentially vocalic; that is, it abounds in vowel sounds, while every word terminates with a vowel. The same guttural aspirarations, indicating the suppression of consonantal sounds, appear to prevail, as in the dialect of Tahiti; the same nasal sound occurs as in that of New Zealand; and in the formation of compound words, or the embodying of...

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