ville, Quebec. When they are in the
woods, to say "I am going to the east," a stick is stuck in the ground
pointing to that direction, Fig. 151. "Am not gone far," another stick
is stuck across the former, close to the ground, Fig. 152. "Gone
far" is the reverse, Fig. 153. The number of days journey of proposed
absence is shown by the same number of sticks across the first; thus
Fig. 154 signifies five days' journey. Cutting the bark off from a
tree on one, two, three or four sides near the butt means "Have had
poor, poorer, poorest luck." Cutting it off all around the tree means
"I am starving." Smoking a piece of birch bark and hanging it on a
tree means "I am sick."

[Illustration: Fig. 153.]

[Illustration: Fig. 154.]

Where there has existed any form of artistic representation, however
rude, and at the same time a system of ideographic gesture signs
prevailed, it would be expected that the form of the latter would
appear in the former. The sign of _river_ and _water_ mentioned on
page 358 being established, when it became necessary or desirable to
draw a character or design to convey the same idea, nothing would be
more natural than to use the graphic form of delineation which is
also above described. It was but one more and an easy step to fasten
upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures that still in
pigments or carvings preserve their skeleton outline, and in their
ideography approach, as has been shown above, the rudiments of the
phonetic alphabets that have been constructed by other peoples. A
transition stage between gestures and pictographs, in which the left
hand is used as a supposed drafting surface upon which the index draws
lines, is exhibited in the DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALASKAN INDIANS, _infra_,
page 498. This device is common among deaf-mutes, without equal
archaeologic importance, as it may have been suggested by the art
of writing, with which they are generally acquainted, even if not
instructed in it.

The reproduction of apparent gesture lines in the pictographs made
by our Indians has, for obvious reasons, been most frequent in the
attempt to convey those subjective ideas which were beyond the range
of an artistic skill limited to the direct representation of objects,
so that the part of the pictographs which is still the most difficult
of interpretation is precisely the one which the study of sign
language is likely to elucidate. The following examples of pictographs
of the Indian