discordant, and meager, resembling more the howling of wild animals than human speech, wherefore it is difficult for a human to learn. They have no religion—at least, I do not deem the gambols and amusing capers in which they indulge at the new moon to be religious customs. The tribe is constantly diminishing in numbers, and it is hoped they may soon disappear from the earth by natural decrease—unless the State government sooner undertakes a war of extermination.[183] [183] Reise-Erinnerungen und Abenteuer aus der neuen Welt in ethnographischen Bildern, von C. A. Pajeken; Bremen, 1861, pp. 97-99. Herr Pajeken’s record bears inherent evidence (at least to one familiar with the region) of reflecting the current local knowledge and opinion concerning the Seri with unsurpassed—indeed unequaled—fidelity; and it is also of value in that it indicates the approximate number of the tribe then surviving in Pueblo Seri, and in that it gives the contemporary estimate of the tribal population. Among the more careful students of the Seri at second hand should be mentioned Buckingham Smith, an enthusiastic collector, translator, and publisher of rare Americana. In the introduction to an anonymous and dateless grammar of the Heve language he wrote in 1861: The lower Pima are in the west of the province [of Sonora], having many towns extending to the frontier of the indomitable Seri, who live some 30 leagues to the north of the mouth of the Hiaqui, and have their farthest limit inland some dozen leagues from the sea, finding shelter among the ridges and in the neighboring island of Tiburon. He added in a note: The Guaima speak nearly the same language as the Seri, are few in number, and live among the Hiaqui in Belen and elsewhere, having retreated before the sanguinary fury of their conquerors.[184] [184] A Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language, translated from an unpublished Spanish manuscript; in Library of American Linguistics, vol. III, New York, 1861, p. 7. While the scientific knowledge of the Seri began with Bartlett’s visit, it assumed definite shape only through the classic researches of Don Francisco Pimentel (Count Herras) in the early sixties. His analysis and classification of the Seri tongue rest on a short vocabulary collected by Señor D. A. Tenochio and transmitted to the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. Noting the condition of the tribe at the time, Señor Pimentel wrote: