al when M. Petzholdt
assures us that there is nothing extraordinary in a boy filling a
whole volume with these elaborate scrawls. If M. Petzholdt had taken
the trouble to look at some of the barbarous hieroglyphics that have
been collected in North America, he would have understood more readily
how the Abbe Domenech, who had spent many years among the Red Indians,
and had himself copied several of their inscriptions, should have
taken the pages preserved in the library of the Arsenal at Paris as
genuine specimens of American pictography. There is a certain
similarity between these scrawls and the figures scratched on rocks,
tombstones, and trees by the wandering tribes of North America; and
though we should be very sorry to endorse the opinion of the
enthusiastic Abbe, or to start any conjecture of our own as to the
real authorship of the 'Livre des Sauvages,' we cannot but think that
M. Petzholdt would have written less confidently, and certainly less
scornfully, if he had been more familiar than he seems to be with the
little that is known of the picture-writing of the Indian tribes. As a
preliminary to the question of the authenticity of the 'Popol Vuh,' a
few words on the pictorial literature of the Red Indians of North
America will not be considered out of place. The 'Popol Vuh' is not
indeed a 'Livre des Sauvages,' but a literary composition in the true
sense of the word. It contains the mythology and history of the
civilised races of Central America, and comes before us with
credentials that will bear the test of critical inquiry. But we shall
be better able to appreciate the higher achievements of the South
after we have examined, however cursorily, the rude beginnings in
literature among the savage races of the North.

[Footnote 94: 'Popol Vuh:' le Livre Sacre et les Mythes de l'Antiquite
Americaine, avec les Livres Heroiques et Historiques des Quiches. Par
l'Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. Paris: Durand, 1861.]

[Footnote 95: 'Manuscrit Pictographique Americain,' precede d'une
Notice sur l'Ideographie des Peaux-Rouges. Par l'Abbe Em. Domenech.
Ouvrage publie sous les auspices de M. le Ministre d'Etat et de la
Maison de l'Empereur. Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 96: 'Das Buch der Wilden im Lichte Franzoesischer
Civilisation.' Mit Proben aus dem in Paris als 'Manuscrit
Pictographique Americain,' veroeffentlichten Schmierbuche eines
Deutsch-Amerikanischen Hinterwaelder Jungen. Von J. Petzholdt. Dresden,
1861.]

Colde