in Irish, which, like a
geological boulder, had been transported from one extremity of the Aryan
world to the other. Pictet considers that the first wave of Aryan
emigration occurred 3,000 years before the Christian Era.

[160] _Writing_.--"Finally, Dudley Firbisse, hereditary professor of the
antiquities of his country, mentions in a letter [to me] a fact
collected from the monuments of his ancestors, that one hundred and
eighty tracts [tractatus] of the doctrine of the druids or magi, were
condemned to the flames in the time of St. Patrick."--_Ogygia_, iii. 30,
p. 219. A writer in the _Ulster Arch. Journal_ mentions a "Cosmography,"
printed at "Lipsiae, 1854." It appears to be a Latin version or epitome
of a Greek work. The writer of this Cosmography was born in 103. He
mentions having "examined the volumes" of the Irish, whom he visited. If
this authority is reliable, it would at once settle the question.--See
_Ulster Arch. Journal_, vol. ii. p. 281.

[161] _Hand_.--A work on this subject has long been promised by Dr.
Graves, and is anxiously expected by paleographists. We regret to learn
that there is no immediate prospect of its publication.

[162] _Quipus_.--Quipus signifies a knot. The cords were of different
colours. Yellow denoted gold and all the allied ideas; white, silver, or
peace; red, war, or soldiers. Each quipus was in the care of a
quiper-carnayoe, or keeper. Acorta mentions that he saw a woman with a
handful of these strings, which she said contained a confession of her
life. See Wilson's _Pre-Historic Man_ for most interesting details on
the subject of symbolic characters and early writing.

[163] _Care_.--Annals of Boyle, vol. ii. p. 22. _Essay_, p. 82.

[164] _Peoples_.--See _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, vol. ii. p.
314, where the writer describes tombs sunk beneath a tumulus, about
twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter, and also tombs exactly
resembling the Irish cromlech, the covering slab of enormous size, being
inclined "apparently to carry off the rain." In his account of the
geographical sites of these remains, he precisely, though most
unconsciously, marks out the line of route which has been assigned by
Irish annalists as that which led our early colonizers to Ireland. He
says they are found in the presidency of Madras, among the mountains of
the Caucasus, on the steppes of Tartary, in northern Africa, "_on the
shores of the Mediterranean they are particularly abundant_," and in