. Fidelity to form,
here as everywhere, is the test of excellence. At the outset, we divine
there can be nothing very subtle in the mythologies of nations with such
languages. Much there must be that will be obscure, much that is vague,
an exhausting variety in repetition, and a strong tendency to lose the
idea in the symbol.

What definiteness of outline might be preserved must depend on the care
with which the old stories of the gods were passed from one person and
one generation to another. The fundamental myths of a race have a
surprising tenacity of life. How many centuries had elapsed between the
period the Germanic hordes left their ancient homes in Central Asia, and
when Tacitus listened to their wild songs on the banks of the Rhine? Yet
we know that through those unnumbered ages of barbarism and aimless
roving, these songs, "their only sort of history or annals," says the
historian, had preserved intact the story of Mannus, the Sanscrit Manu,
and his three sons, and of the great god Tuisco, the Indian Dyu.[9-1] So
much the more do all means invented by the red race to record and
transmit thought merit our careful attention. Few and feeble they seem
to us, mainly shifts to aid the memory. Of some such, perhaps, not a
single tribe was destitute. The tattoo marks on the warrior's breast,
his string of gristly scalps, the bear's claws around his neck, were not
only trophies of his prowess, but records of his exploits, and to the
contemplative mind contain the rudiments of the beneficent art of
letters. Did he draw in rude outline on his skin tent figures of men
transfixed with arrows as many as he had slain enemies, his education
was rapidly advancing. He had mastered the elements of _picture
writing_, beyond which hardly the wisest of his race progressed. Figures
of the natural objects connected by symbols having fixed meanings make
up the whole of this art. The relative frequency of the latter marks its
advancement from a merely figurative to an ideographic notation. On what
principle of mental association a given sign was adopted to express a
certain idea, why, for instance, on the Chipeway scrolls a circle means
_spirits_, and a horned snake _life_, it is often hard to guess. The
difficulty grows when we find that to the initiated the same sign calls
up quite different ideas, as the subject of the writer varies from war
to love, or from the chase to religion. The connection is generally
beyond the power of divi