The characteristic triliteral roots of all the Semitic languages seemed to separate them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as three subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the Semitic. The biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism which was believed to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect that Egyptian might be a surviving witness to that far-off stage of the Semitic languages when triliteral roots had not yet been formed from presumed original biliterals; Sethes investigations, however, prove that the Coptic biliterals are themselves derived from Old Egyptian triliterals, and that the triliteral roots enormously preponderated in Egyptian of the earliest known form; that view is, therefore, no longer tenable.
These deplorable results were, of course, not universally produced; there were admirable exceptions both among masters and among slaves - instances of benevolent protection on the one side and of unselfish devotion on the other; but the evil effects without doubt greatly preponderated.
They came from Tonga in 1835 and naturally settled first in the eastern islands, where the Tongan element, already familiar to them, preponderated.