[Footnote 24: The reader cannot but be pleased with what Goguet says on the practice of numbering with the fingers, so common in most nations, and adopted we see by the Otaheitans. "Nature has provided us with a kind of arithmetical instrument more generally used than is commonly imagined; I mean our fingers. Every thing inclines us to think, that these were the first instruments used by men to assist them in the practice of numeration. We may observe in Homer, that Proteus counts his sea-calves by fives and fives, that is, by his fingers. Several nations in America have no other instruments of calculation. It was probably the same in the primitive ages. It is another strong presumption of the truth of what I now advance, that all civilized nations count by tens, tens of tens, or _hundreds_, tens of hundreds, _thousands_, and so on; still from ten to ten. We can discover no reason why the number ten should be chosen rather than any other for the term of numeration, except this primitive practice of counting by the fingers." The whole of his observations on this subject are well worthy of minute consideration. On such elements, the provision of nature, are founded the most sublime and important sciences.--E.] In measuring distance they are much more deficient than in computing numbers, having but one term which answers to fathom; when they speak of distances from place to place, they express it, like the Asiatics, by the time that is required to pass it. Their language is soft and melodious; it abounds with vowels, and we easily learnt to pronounce it: But found it exceedingly difficult to teach them to pronounce a single word of ours; probably not only from its abounding in consonants, but from some peculiarity in its structure; for Spanish and Italian words, if ending in a vowel, they pronounced with great facility. Whether it is copious, we were not sufficiently acquainted with it to know; but it is certainly very imperfect, for it is almost totally without inflexion, both of nouns and verbs. Few of the nouns have more than one case, and few of the verbs more than one tense; yet we found no great difficulty in making ourselves mutually understood, however strange it may appear in speculation. They have, however, certain _affixa_, which, though but few in number, are very useful to them, and puzzled us extremely. One asks another, _Harre hea?_ "Where are you going?" the other answers _Ivahinera_, "To my wives;" upon which the first repeating the answer interrogatively, "To your wives?" is answered, _Ivahinereira_; "Yes, I am going to my wives." Here the suffixa _era_ and _eira_ save several words to both parties.[25] [Footnote 25: A table of some words of the language follows in the copy.--It is omitted here, because an opportunity will occur, to give one more full and correct; and it seemed injudicious to run the hazard of being charged with unnecessary repetition.--E.]