The testimony of Bellonius is full and decisive on the point. He states; “No part of the world, I believe, is free from those banditti, wandering about in troops; whom we, by mistake, call Gypsies, and Bohemians. When we were at Cairo, and the villages bordering on the Nile, we found troops of these strolling thieves sitting under palm-trees; and they are _esteemed foreigners_ in _Egypt_.” Aventin expressly makes Turkey their original place of rendezvous; and this furnishes a reason for the south east parts of Europe being the most crowded with them. If all that came to Europe passed by this route, it accounts for a greater number remaining in those countries, than in others to which they would have a much longer travel; and before their arrival at which, their hordes might be much divided. It is a just assertion, that one of the most infallible methods of determining the origin of a people, would be the discovery of a country in which their language is that of the natives. It is a fact incontrovertibly established, that besides the Gypsies speaking the language of the country in which they live, they have a general one of their own, in which they converse with each other. Not knowing any speech correspondent with the Gypsies, some have been ready to pronounce it a mere jargon; not considering how extravagant a surmise it would be, that a people rude, uncivilized, and separated hundreds of miles from each other, have invented a language. Others who are better informed on the subject, allow that the language brought into Europe with the Gypsies, was really vernacular, of some country; but suppose it is so disguised and corrupted, partly by design, and partly by adventitious events, through length of time, and the continued wandering of these people, that it must be considered a new language, and now used by the Gypsies only. That it is the dialect of some particular part of the globe, though no longer pure, as in the country whence it originated, is an opinion which has obtained the greatest concurrence among the learned. Grellmann says, had a German listened a whole day to a Gypsey conversation, he would not have comprehended a single expression. It must doubtless appear extraordinary, that the language of a people who had lived for centuries in Europe, should have remained so much a secret: but it was not easy to gain information from the Gypsies concerning it. Acquainted, by tradition, with the deception their predecessors practised on coming into Europe, they are suspicious; and fearing an explanation might be dangerous to themselves, they are not disposed to be communicative.—But how was it possible for the learned of former centuries, to be competent to the investigation, who had not the aids which now so copiously occur to the historical etymologist?