expressions which are as thoroughly transcendental as any to be found in
the _Kritik der Reinen Vernunft_.[2]

Their literary faculty is further demonstrated in the copiousness of
their vocabularies, their rare facility of expression, and their natural
aptitude for the acquisition of other languages. Theophilie Gautier used
to say, that the most profitable book for a professional writer to read
is the dictionary; that is, that a mastery of words is his most valuable
acquirement. The extraordinarily rich synonomy of some American tongues,
notably the Algonkin, the Aztec, and the Qquichua, attests how
sedulously their resources have been cultivated. Father Olmos, in his
grammar of the Aztec, gives many examples of twenty and thirty
synonymous expressions, all in current use in his day. A dictionary, in
my possession, of the Maya, one of the least plastic of American
tongues, gives over thirty thousand words, and scarcely a hundred of
them of foreign extraction.

This linguistic facility is shown also in the ease with which they
acquire foreign languages. "It is not uncommon," says Dr. Washington
Matthews, speaking of the Hidatsa, by no means a specially brilliant
tribe, "to find persons among them, some even under twenty years of age,
who can speak fluently four or five different languages."[3] Mr. Stephen
Powers tells us that, in California, he found many Indians speaking
three, four, five or more languages, generally including English;[4] and
in South America, both Humboldt and D'Orbigny express their surprise at
the same fact, which they repeatedly observed.[5]

But the most tangible evidence of both their linguistic and literary
ability is the work some of these natives have accomplished in European
tongues. It does not come within the limits of my plan to enter fully