Note 218 — CHAP. XI.

See this vocabulary, at the end of vol. ii. of Dalrymple’s Collection of Voyages. And yet, though Tasman’s people used the words of this vocabulary, in speaking to the natives of Tongataboo (his Amsterdam), we are told in the accounts of his voyage, that they did not understand one another; a circumstance worth observing, as it shows how cautious we should be, upon the scanty evidence afforded by such transient visits as Tasman’s, and, indeed, as those of most of the subsequent navigators of the Pacific Ocean, to found any argument about the affinity, or want of affinity, of the languages of the different islands. No one now will venture to say, that a Cocos man, and one of Tongataboo, could not understand each other. Some of the words of Horn Island, another of Schouten’s discoveries, also belong to the dialect of Tongataboo. See Dalrymple, as above.