nation, and the key to ideographic writing once
lost can never be recovered.

The number of such arbitrary characters in the Chipeway notation is said
to be over two hundred, but if the distinction between a figure and a
symbol were rigidly applied, it would be much reduced. This kind of
writing, if it deserves the name, was common throughout the continent,
and many specimens of it, scratched on the plane surfaces of stones,
have been preserved to the present day. Such is the once celebrated
inscription on Dighton Rock, Massachusetts, long supposed to be a record
of the Northmen of Vinland; such those that mark the faces of the cliffs
which overhang the waters of the Orinoco, and those that in Oregon,
Peru, and La Plata have been the subject of much curious speculation.
They are alike the mute and meaningless epitaphs of vanished
generations.

I would it could be said that in favorable contrast to our ignorance of
these inscriptions is our comprehension of the highly wrought
pictography of the Aztecs. No nation ever reduced it more to a system.
It was in constant use in the daily transactions of life. They
manufactured for writing purposes a thick, coarse paper from the leaves
of the agave plant by a process of maceration and pressure. An Aztec
book closely resembles one of our quarto volumes. It is made of a
single sheet, twelve to fifteen inches wide, and often sixty or seventy
feet long, and is not rolled, but folded either in squares or zigzags in
such a manner that on opening it there are two pages exposed to view.
Thin wooden boards are fastened to each of the outer leaves, so that the
whole presents as neat an appearance, remarks Peter Martyr, as if it had
come from the shop of a skilful bookbinder. They also covered buildings,
tapestries, and scrolls of parchment with these devices, and for
trifling transactions were familiar with the use of _slates_ of soft
stone from which the figures could readily be erased with water.[11-1]
What is still more astonishing, there is reason to believe, in some
instances, their figures were not painted, but actually _printed_ with
movable blocks of wood on which the symbols were carved in relief,
though this was probably confined to those intended for ornament only.

In these records we discern something higher than a mere symbolic
notation. They contain the germ of a phonetic alphabet, and represent
sounds of spoken language. The symbol is often not connected with the
_idea_