File:The Andes and the Amazon - or, Across the continent of South America (1870) (18168621926).jpg

Title: The Andes and the Amazon : or, Across the continent of South America
Identifier: andesamazonoracr00orto (find matches)
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Orton, James, 1830-1877
Subjects: Natural history -- South America; Ecuador -- Description and travel; Amazon River; Andes -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries

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Indians on the Amazon. 317 each having a different language; even the scattered mem- bers of the same tribe can not understand each other.* This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the in- flexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow round of thought and life. When and where the Babel existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi fam- ily separated, we know not. We only know that though different in words, these languages have the same gram- matical construction. In more than one respect the poly- glot American is antipodal to the Chinese. The language of the former is richest in words, that of the latter the poorest. The preposition follows the noun, and the verb ends the sentence. Ancient Tupi is the basis of the Lin- goa Geral, the infer-tribal tongue on the Middle Amazon. The semi-civilized Ticunas, Mundurucus, etc., have one costume—the men in trowsers and white cotton shirts, the women in calico petticoats, with short, loose chemises, and their hair held in a knot on the top of the head by a comb, usually of foreign make, but sometimes made of bamboo splinters. The wild tribes north and south go nearly or quite nude, while those on the western tributaries wear cotton or bark togas or ponchos. The habita- tions are generally a frame-work of poles, thatched with palm-leaves; the walls sometimes latticed and plastered with mud, and the furni- ture chiefly hammocks and earthen vessels.
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Native Comb. * Authors compute in South America from 280 to 700 languages (Abbe' Royo said 2000), of which four fifths are composed of idioms radically dis- tinct.

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