It was principally among the East Indians, Egyptians, and Syrians that the most extraordinary emblems were consecrated to religion.

A South Sea Island Missionary tells how once being busy carpentering, and having forgotten his square, he wrote a message to his wife for it, with a piece of charcoal on a block, and sent it by a native, who, amazed to find that the block could talk without a mouth, for a long time afterward carried it hung around his neck by a string, and to his wondering countrymen told what he saw it do.

The art of writing, however strange and mysterious it seemed to the savage tribes of men, was developed from steps of invention. Uncivilized men took the first step in writing by making pictures of such natural or artificial objects known to them.

The following picture-writing, used by hunting tribes of American Indians, records an expedition across waters, led by a chief on horse-back, having a Magical drumstick in his hand.

سه

PICTURE-WRITING, ROCK NEAR LAKE SUPERIOR (AFTER SCHOolcraft).

There were fifty-one men in four canoes, the first being led by an ally of the chief whose name was Kishkemunazee (Kingfisher), as shown by the bird. The land tortoise, the emblem of land, shows that they reached the other side of the water, the picture of the three suns under the sky indicating three days in crossing.

When the tortoise is painted to represent land it is not a mere imitation, but has become an emblem or symbol. The bird does not represent a real kingfisher, but a man of that name; this becomes the first step toward phonetic writing or by sound, i.e., to make a picture stand for the sound of the word to be spoken.

Tylor says (p. 169): "How men may have made the next move toward writing may be learnt from the common child's games of

rebus, i.e., writing words 'by things.' Like many other games, this one keeps up in child's sport what in earlier ages was man's earnest. Thus if one writes the word 'waterman' by a picture of a water-jug and a man, this is drawing the meaning of the word in a way hardly beyond the American Indian's picture of the kingfisher. But it is very different when in a child's book of puzzles one finds the drawing of a water-can, a man being shot, and a date fruit, this representing in rebus the word 'Can-di-date.'

"For now what the pictures have come to stand for is no longer their meaning, but their mere sound. This is true phonetic writing, though of a rude kind, and shows how the practical art of writing really came to be invented. This invention seems to have been made more than once, and in somewhat different ways. The old Mexicans, before the arrival of the Spaniards, had got so far as to spell the names of persons and places by pictures, rebus fashion. Even when they began to be Christianized, they contrived to use their picturewriting for the Latin words of their new religion. Thus they painted a flag (pan), a stone (te), a prickly pear (noch)—which were together pronounced pa-te-noch-te and served to spell pater noster, in a way that was totally exact for Mexicans who had no in their language. In the same way they ended the prayer with the picture of water (a) and aloe (me) to express amen."

Pwriting

ра

noch

te

te PATER NOSTER ON MEXICAN PICT

URE-WRITING (AFTER AUBIN).

"This leads on to a more important system of writing. Looking at the ordinary Chinese characters on tea-chests or vases, one would hardly think they had to do with pictures of things. But there are fortunately preserved certain early Chinese characters, known as the 'ancient pictures,' which show how what were at first distinctly formed sketches of objects came to be dashed off in a few strokes of the rabbit's hair pencil, till they passed into the meaningless looking cursive forms now in use, as is seen in the following figure.

"The Chinese did not stop short at making such mere pictures of objects, which goes but little way toward writing. The inventors of the present mode of Chinese writing wanted to represent the spoken sounds, but here they were put in a difficulty by their language consisting of monosyllables, so that one word has many different meanings. To meet this they devised an ingenious plan of making compound characters, or 'pictures and sounds,' in which one part gives the sound, while the other gives the sense. To give an idea of this, suppose it were agreed that a picture of a box should stand for the sound box. As, however, this sound has several meanings, some sign must be added to show which is intended. Thus a key might be drawn beside it, to show it is a box to put things in; or a leaf if it is to mean the plant called box; or a hand, if it is intended for box on the ear; or a whip would show it was to signify the box of a coach.

"This would be for us a clumsy proceeding, but it would be a great advance beyond mere picture-writing, as it would make sure at once of the sound and the meaning. Thus in Chinese, the sound chow has various meanings, as ship, fluff, flickering, basin, loquacity. Therefore, the character which represents a ship, chow, which is placed first in the figure as represented afterward with additional characters, to show which particular meaning of chow is intended.

"These examples, though far from explaining the whole mystery of Chinese writing, give some idea of the principles of its sound, characters, and keys of determinative signs, and show why a Chinese has to master such an immensely complicated set of characters in order to write his own language.

"Next as to the cuneiform writing, such as is to be seen at the British Museum on the huge man-headed bulls of Nineveh, or on the flat baked bricks which were pages of books in the library of Sennacherib. The marks, like wedges or arrow-heads, arranged in groups or rows, do not look much like pictures of objects. Yet there is evidence that they came at first from picture-writing; for instance, the sun was represented by a rude figure of it by four strokes arranged round. Of the groups of characters in an inscription, some serve directly to represent objects, as man, woman, river, house, while other groups are read phonetically as standing for syllables.

"The inventors of this ancient system appear to have belonged to