[559] Perhaps Misteco—the Mistek; one of the Mexican group of languages. Many interesting particulars regarding them will be found in Squier’s Nicaragua.
[560] This probably means the old Celtic of Brittany. No. 50 is the modern patois of the province.
[561] If this be meant for Gælic, as seems likely, No. 73 can only be the Lowland Scotch.
[562] I need hardly observe on the vagueness of this name. Mezzofanti learned from more than one missionary something of the languages of Oceanica; but how much I have no means of determining.
[563] For Pampanga, one of the languages of the Philippine Islands—an offshoot of the Malay family.
[564] The old language of Peru. It is fast recovering the ground from which it had been driven by the Spanish. See Markham’s “Cuzco and Lima.”
[565] I cannot guess what is meant by this name.
[566] A language of the New Hebrides. See Adelung, I. p. 626.
[567] There can be no doubt that much light on this point may be derived from a thorough examination of these books and manuscripts; and I trust that some of the Cardinal’s friends at Rome, (where his library is now deposited, having been purchased for the Vatican,) will undertake the task. I have endeavoured in some degree to supply the want by a careful examination of the catalogue published in Rome in 1851, and often cited in this volume. But it is so full of the grossest and most ludicrous inaccuracies, so utterly unscientific, and so constantly confounds one language with another, that it can only be used with the utmost caution, and at best affords but little assistance for the purposes of the Memoir.
[568] I should observe that I do not think it necessary to adopt the nomenclature of languages recently introduced. I will for the most part follow that of Adelung.