Now _Tigil_ is the name of the chief river of Kamskatka; the one which divides the Kamskadales from the Korki; so that, in Tigil the god, we have the _eponymus_ of what in the Bodo, as in many other countries besides, is a common object of reverence.[103]
[96] Captain Hall's Voyage to the Great Loo-choo Island, p. 71.--Prichard, vol. iv.
[98] Transactions of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1846.
[103] Apud hanc gentem agarici cujusdam succus potui, inter convivia inservit. Ebrietatem inducit; quodque magis mirum est, urina ebriorum, quæ ipsa ab aliis potatur, idem pollet. Neque vim amittit per tertiam vel quartam vesicam transmissa.
The phænomena which occur in Asiatic ethnology, in Caucasus and High Asia, prepare us for those of the ethnology of America. In Asia we found, on one side, the Turk tribes spread over a space nearly as large as Europe, and that with but little variation--a typical instance of what constitutes a large ethnological area. Then, on the other hand, were the fastnesses of Caucasus, where we found, packed up within a very limited area, a multiplicity of mutually unintelligible languages, languages that were counted by the dozen and the score--the Circassian, Georgian, Lesgian, Mizjeji, and their subordinate dialects. So that within a small geographical range we had, in juxtaposition with each other, the _maximum_ of extension and the _maximum_ of limitation.
Now this is what we shall find in America--large areas, like the Turk, in contact with small ones, like the Ossetic.
But, in America, there are two points of difference--
1st. The multiplicity of languages within a limited area is the rule rather than the exception.
2nd. There is not always so peculiar a class of physical conditions as is to be found in the mountain fastnesses of Caucasus to account for it; since in America we find steppes and prairies, like those of Turkestan and Mongolia, inhabited by tribes as different from each other as those of the most isolated and isolating mountain-valleys.
Furthermore--when the American languages differ from one another, they differ in a manner to which Asia has supplied no parallel.
Also--when the American languages agree with one another, they agree in a manner to which Asia has furnished no parallel. This, however, is at present only indicated. Its explanation will find place when we have treated of the Eskimo, Kolúch, and certain other families.