the only one, foreign to the immediate object of the ‘Synopsis,’ with which a comparison has been introduced. Want of space did not permit him to extend the inquiry into the language of Mexico and other parts of Spanish America.” Mr. Bradford, however, in his “Researches into the Origin and History of the Red Race,” p. 309, states unqualifiedly that “philologists have examined into the form and character of the American languages, and have established satisfactorily that they have all sprung from one common source. The features of resemblance are such as enter into their elementary construction; the diversities, those to which all languages are exposed, by the separation and dispersion of those who speak them.” On the other hand, Baron Von Humboldt, in his “Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain,” vol. i. p. 138, after some remarks upon the migrations of the American tribes, proceeds to state that “the great variety of languages still spoken in the kingdom of Mexico proves a great variety of races and origin. The number of these languages exceeds twenty, of which fourteen have grammars and dictionaries tolerably complete. The following are their names: the Mexican or Aztec language; the Otomite; the Tarasc; the Zapotec; the Mistec; the Maya or Yucatan; the Totonac; the Popolouc; the Matlazing; the Huastec; the Mixed; the Caquiquel; the Taraumar; the Tepehuan; and the Cora. It appears that the most part of these languages, far from being dialects of the same, (as some authors have falsely advanced,) are at least as different from one another as the Greek and the German, or the French and the Polish. This is the case with at least seven languages of New Spain, of which I possess the vocabularies. The variety of idioms spoken by the people of the new continent, and which, without the least exaggeration, may be stated at some hundreds, offers a very striking phenomenon, particularly when we compare it with the few languages spoken in Asia and Europe.” We might give quotations from other writers, of an equally contradictory nature, were it our design to write a treatise upon the origin or the resemblances of the American languages in general. We intend, however, to confine our attention solely to the language of Yucatan, or the Maya tongue, mentioned above, by Humboldt, as one of the original languages of New Spain.