use.

The plant is allowed to stand until it is fully in blossom, when it is cut down with rape-hooks, tied in loads, and carried o the works, where it is deposited in strata in the steeping-vat. As soon as the vat is filled with the green plant, water is admitted sufficient to cover it, and the whole is left to digest and ferment, until the greatest part of the pulp is extracted, without letting the tender tops run to putrefaction; and it is the management of this point which occasions the planter the greatest difficulty; for, if he draws off the water but two hours too soon, he inevitably loses the greatest part of the pulp, and if the fermentation runs but two hours too long, the whole is spoiled. Nine tenths of the indigo of the U. States, it is asserted, are more or less injured by an excessive fermentation. To ascertain the due degree of fermentation, the workman draws out, from time to time, a handful of the plant, and, when he finds the tops grow very tender and pale, and observes the stronger leaves change their color to a less lively pale, he draws the liquor off without delay. An experienced manufacturer will also form a tolerable estimate of the degree of fermentation by the grain of the infusion, of which he frequently beats a little in a silver cup. When the pulp is believed to be extracted, the infusion is drawn off into the beating-vat, after which it is treated in a manner similar to that above described. It is, at present, a great desideratum that the improved method of extracting this substance practised in India should be transferred to the U. States, as it is believed that it would immediately result in the production of a better article, and a much greater quantity of it, than is at present manufactured. The value of the indigo consumed in the U. States in 1829, has been estimated to be $2,000,000. (American Journal of Science, vol. xviii, p. 237.) Of this, about one tenth part only, or 200,000 pounds, was raised in the country. The average price of the imported indigo has been $1,15 per pound, while the American article has sold for 50 cents the pound; and yet it is not doubted that the American indigo can be made to equal the foreign, with proper care and attention.

INDIRECT TAXES; those which fall in reality on other persons than the immediate subjects of them. They are therefore taxes upon those who finally pay them, and not upon those upon whom they are directly laid. Thus the state exacts custom and excise duties from merchants, upon merchandise, but the consumer, in the price he pays for his articles, refunds this tax to the merchant, so that the last buyer is the one who really pays the tax. There are taxes which appear to be direct, but yet fall indirectly upon others; for instance, the poll tax upon the serfs in Russia. As they are obliged to give every thing, except what they need for their subsistence, to their masters, the latter, of course, obtain so much the less as the poll tax is greater, and thus the tax upon the peasants appears to be an indirect tax upon their masters. Thus almost all direct taxes upon servants are paid by their masters, and therefore a direct tax upon the former is an indirect tax upon the latter. Respecting the opinion that every tax affects those only who derive their income from the soil, see Physiocratic System.

INDORSEMENT OF NEGOTIABLE PAPER. (See Bills of Exchange.)

INDOSTAN. (See Hindoostan.)

INDRE; a river in France, which rises about 4 miles N. N. W. Boussac, in the department of the Creuse; passes by St. Sever, La Châtre, Châteauroux, Chatillon (where it becomes navigable), Loches, Cormery, Azay le Rideau, &c., and joins the Loire at Rigny, between Saumur and Tours.

INDRE; a department of France, named from the river Indre. (q. v.) (See Department.)

INDRE-AND-LOIRE; a department of France, so called from the rivers Indre (q. v.) and Loire (q. v.). (See Depart ment.)

INDIAN LANGUAGES OF AMERICA.* The aboriginal languages of the continent of America exhibit various phenomena, a knowledge of which will be found indispensable to a just theory of speech. It is true, that we have long had our systems of universal grammar, or, in other words, our theories of language, as deduced from the small number of European and Asiatic tongues, which have been hitherto studied by the learned; but from the rapid advances made, during our own age, in comparative philology, particularly by means of the unwritten dialects of barbarous nations, there is reason to believe that some important modifications are yet to be made in our theories. Of the various unwritten languages, those of the American continent present us with many new and striking facts. We are informed by that distinguished scholar of our country, Mr. Du Ponceau, from whose writings we derive nearly all that is known of the general characteristics of these dialects, that there appears to be "a wonderful organization, which distinguishes the languages of the aborigines of this country from all the other idioms of the known world." That eminent philologist was the first to discover, and make known to the world, the remarkable character, which pervades, as far as yet known, the aboriginal languages of America, from Greenland to cape Horn. In the period which has elapsed since the publication of his Report, by the American Philosophical

The subject of this article is so interesting, in regard to general and comparative philology, and so little is generally known respecting it, that it has been thought proper to allow it a space more than proportionate to the usual length of philological articles in this work.

+ Report of the historical and literary committee to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, drawn up by Mr. Du Ponceau, 1819.

Society at Philadelphia, in 1819, all the observations which have been made on Indian languages, at that time unknown, have confirmed his theory; or, as he expresses it, his general result of a multitude of facts collected with care. This result has shown, that the astonishing variety of forms of human speech, which exists in the Eastern hemisphere, is not to be found in the Western. Here we find no monosyllabic language, like the Chinese and its cognate idioms; no analytical language, like those of the North of Europe, with their numerous expletive and auxiliary monosyllables; no such contrast is exhibited as that which is so striking to the most superficial observer, between the complication of the forms of the Basque language and the comparative simplicity of its neighbors, the French and Spanish; but a uniform system, with such differences only as constitute varieties in natural objects, seems to pervade them all; and this genus of human languages has been called (by Mr. Du Ponceau) polysynthetic, from the numerous combinations of ideas which it presents in the form of words. It is also a fact, says the same learned writer, that the American languages are rich in words, and regular in their forms, and that they do not yield, in those respects, to any other idiom. These fucts have attracted the attention of the learned in Europe as well as in this country; but they have not been able entirely to remove the prejudices that have been so long ennations. The pride of civilization is retertained against the languages of savage luctant to admit facts like these, because they show how little philosophy and sci euce have to do with the formation of language. A vague idea still prevails, that the idioms of barbarous tribes must be greatly inferior to those of civilized ne

tions, and reasous are industriously sought for, not only to prove that inferiority in point of cultivation, which would readily be admitted, but also to show that their organization is comparatively imperfect. Thus a learned member of the Berlin academy of sciences-baron William von Humboldt-in an ingenious and profound Dissertation on the Forms of Languages (Ueber das Entstehen der grammatischen Formen und ihren Einfluss auf die IdeenEntwicklung, Berlin, 1822), while he admits

that those of the American Indians are rich, methodical and artificial in their structure, yet would not allow them to possess what he there called genuine grammatical forms (ächte formen), because, says he, their words are not inflected, like those of the Greek, Latin and Sanscrit, but are formed by a different process, which he calls agglutination; and, on that supposition, he assigned to them an inferior rank in the scale of languages, considered in the point of view of their capacity to aid the developement of ideas. We have understood, however, that this very learned writer has, upon further examination, yielded, in a great degree, if not entirely, to the opinions of Mr. Du Ponceau. He certainly must have found, in the Delaware Grammar of Mr. Zeisberger, since translated and published by the Philosophical Society, under the editorial care of Mr. Du Ponceau, those inflected forms which he justly admires, and that the process, which he is pleased to call agglutination, is not the only one which our Indians employ in the combination of their ideas and the formation of their words. This peculiar process of compounding words, as Mr. Du Ponceau observes, in his preface to Zeisberger's Delaware Grammar, is undoubtedly the most curious thing to be found in the Indian languages. It was first observed by Egede, n his account of Greenland; and Mr. Heckewelder explains it at large, in the 18th letter of his Correspondence with Mr. Du Ponceau (Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society). By this means, says governor Colden, speaking of the Iroquois, these nations can increase the number of their words to any extent. None of the languages of the old world, that we know of, appear to possess this prerogative; a multitude of ideas are combined together by a process, which may be termed agglutination, if the term be found agreeable, but which, whatever name it may receive, is not the less a subject of real wonder to the inquiring phi

lologist. One example, from the Delaware language, will convey a clear idea of this process of compounding; "and 1 have chosen," says Mr. Du Ponceau, "this word for the sake of its euphony, to which even the most delicate Italian ear will not object. When a Delaware woman is playing with a little dog or cat, or some other young animal, she will often say to it, Kuligatschis, which I would translate into English-Give me your pretty little paw, or, What a pretty little paw you have! This word is compounded thus: k is the inseparable pronoun of the second person, and may be rendered thou or thy, according to the context; uli (pronounced oolee) is part of the word wulit, which signifies handsome or pretty; it has also other meanings, which need not be here specified; gat is part of the word wichgat, which signifies a leg, or paw; schis (pronounced sheess) is a diminutive termination, and conveys the idea of littleness: thus, in one word, the Indian woman says, thy pretty little paw! and, according to the gesture which she makes, either calls upon it to present its foot, or simply expresses her fondling admiration. In the same manner, pilape (a youth) is formed from pilsit (chaste, innocent,) and lenάpe (a man). It is difficult to find a more elegant combination of ideas, in a single word, of any existing idiom. I do not know of any language, out of this part of the world, in which words are compounded in this manner. The process consists in putting together portions of different words, so as to awaken, at the same time, in the mind of the hearer, the various ideas which they separately express. But this is not the only manner in which the American Indians combine their ideas into words. They have also many of the forms of the languages which we so much admire the Latin, Greek, Sanscrit, Slavonic, &c.-mixed with others peculiarly their own. Indeed, the multitude of ideas, which in their languages are combined with their verbs, has justly attracted the attention of the learned in all parts of the world. It is not their transitive conjugations, expressing, at the same time, the idea of the person acting and that acted upon, that have excited so much astonishment. These are found also, though not with the same rich variety of forms, in the Hebrew and other Oriental languages. But, when two verbs, with intermediate ideas, are combined together into one, as in the Delaware n'schingiwipoma (I do not like to eat with him), which the abbé Molina also declares to exist in the idiom of Chile-iduancloclavin (I do not

wish to eat with him) there is sufficient cause to wonder, particularly when we compare the complication of these languages with the simplicity of the Chinese and its kindred dialects in the ancient world. Whence can have arisen such a marked diversity in the forms of human speech? Nor is it only with the verbs that accessary ideas are so curiously combined in the Indian languages; it is so likewise with the other parts of speech. Take the adverb, for instance. The abstract idea of time is frequently annexed to it. Thus, if the Delawares mean to say-if you do not return-they will express it by mattatsch gluppiveque, which may be thus construed: matta is the negative adverb no; tsch (or tsh) is the sign of the future, with which the adverb is inflected; gluppiweque is the second person plural, present tense, subjunctive mood, of the verb gluppiechton, to turn about, or return. In this manner, every idea meant to be conveyed by this sentence, is clearly understood. The subjunctive mood shows the uncertainty of the action; and the sign of the future tense, coupled with the adverb, points to a time not yet come, when it may or may not take place. The Latin phrase nisi veneris expresses all these meanings; but the English if you do not come, and the French si vous ne venez pas, have by no means the same elegant precision. The idea which, in Delaware and Latin, the subjunctive form directly conveys, is left to be gathered in the English and French, from the words if and si, and there is nothing else to point out the futurity of the action. And, where the two former languages express every thing with two words, each of the latter requires five, which yet represent a smaller number of ideas." Mr. Du Ponceau, then, justly asks, To which of all these grammatical forms is the epithet barbarous to be applied? This very cursory view of the general structure of the Indian languages, exemplified by the Delaware, will at least convince us, that a considerable degree of art and method has presided over their formation. Mr. Du Ponceau has summed up the general results of his laborious and extensive investigations of the American languages, including the whole continent, from Greenland to cape Horn, in three propositions-"1. that the American languages in general are rich in words and in grammatical forms, and that, in their complicated construction, the greatest order, method and regularity prevail; 2. that these complicated forms, which I call polysynthetic, appear to exist in all those lan

guages, from Greenland to cape Horn; 3. that these forms appear to differ essen tially from those of the ancient and mod ern languages of the old hemisphere." In North America, he selected for investiga tion the three principal mother tongues, namely, the Karalit (or language of Greenland and the Esquimaux), the Delaware, and the Iroquois; in Middle America, the Poconchi (spoken in Guatemala,) the Mexican proper, and the Tarascan dialect; in South America, the Caribbee and Araucanian languages. For the purpose of obtaining general results like those above stated, it was not necessary or useful, in the first instance, to go into minute details, nor to confound the reader by an extensive display of numerous idioms; but to take the widest possible range, so as to adduce examples from quarters the most remote from each other. In this manner, we can take a commanding position, assume our general rule, and call for exceptions. These and other results, when first announced, appeared so extraordinary in the languages of "savages," that superficial theorists, who relied upon their own visionary speculations, and mere practical men, who trusted implicitly to the loose information of illiterate Indian interpreters, boldly and arrogantly called in question the correctness of them. The learned author and his venerable friend, the reverend Mr. Heckewelder, who first drew the public attention to this subject, were most unceremoniously treated, the former as an enthusiast, whose feelings had outrun his judgment, and the latter, as at best an innocent ignoramus, and very near, if not quite, a downright impostor, in regard to a language which he had studied 40 years. Mr. Du Ponceau, like a real philosopher, a lover of true knowledge, repelled the unworthy insinuations by an appeal to facts, with a forbearance and dignity, and, we may add, a knowledge of his subject, which must have been felt by his adversaries as the severest of reproofs. The learned author, denying that he was an enthusiastic or exclusive admirer of the Indian languages, founded his arguments, in reply, upon incontrovertible facts, stated by missionaries and other writers of our own time; but, if he had thought it worth the pains, he was well aware, that proofs of the same kind might have been found in very ancient writers, whom even his adversaries would not have suspected of enthusiasm in philology; and these proofs ought to have been well known to those adversaries, and ought, in candid minds. to have repressed