[Footnote 139: The ingenious author of _Récherches sur les Americains_ illustrates the grounds of this assertion in the following satisfactory manner: "C'est quelque chose de surprenant, que la foule des idiomes, tous variés entr'eux, que parlent les naturels de l'Amérique Septentrionale. Qu'on reduise ces idiomes à des racines qu'on les simplifie, qu'on en separe les dialectes et les jargons derivés, il en resulte toujours cinq ou six languesmeres, respectivement incomprehensibles. On a observé la même singularité dans la Siberie et la Tartarie, où le nombre des idiomes, et les dialectes, est également multiplié; et rien n'est plus commun, que d'y voir deux hordes voisines qui ne se comprennent point. On rétrouve cette même multiplicité de jargons dans toutes les Provinces de l'Amérique Méridionale." [He might also have included Africa.] "Il y a beaucoup d'apparence que _la vie sauvage, en dispersant les hommes par petites troupes isolées dans des bois épais, occasione nécessairement cette grande diversité des langues_, dont le nombre diminue à mésure que la société, en rassemblant les barbares vagabonds, en forme un corps de nation. Alors l'idiome le plus riche, ou le moins panvre en mots, devient dominant, et absorbe les autres." Tom. i. p. 159, 160.--D.] "However, we must have a far more intimate acquaintance with the languages spoken here, and in the more northern parts of New Holland, before we can be warranted to pronounce that they are totally different. Nay, we have good grounds for the opposite opinion; for we found that the animal called _kangooroo_ at Endeavour river, was known under the same name here; and I need not observe, that it is scarcely possible to suppose that this was not transmitted from one another, but accidentally adopted by two nations, differing in language and extraction. Besides, as it seems very improbable that the Van Diemen's Land inhabitants should have ever lost the use of canoes or sailing vessels, if they had been originally conveyed thither by sea, we must necessarily admit that they, as well as the _kangooroo_ itself, have been stragglers by land from the more northern parts of the country. And if there be any force in this observation, while it traces the origin of the people, it will, at the same time, serve to fix another point, if Captain Cook and Captain Furneaux have not already decided it, that New Holland is no where totally divided by the sea into islands, as some have imagined."[140] [Footnote 140: The reader is aware of the erroneous opinion generally entertained at this time, of Van Diemen's Land being connected with the continent of New Holland. He will therefore modify the remark above given, as to its inhabitants being stragglers by land from the more northern parts of the country. It is of some consequence also to inform him, that in the visit of D'Entrecasteaux, it was found that the people who inhabited the shores of the channel were in possession of bark canoes.--E.]