offer could tempt him to part with his
charger.

An A-tco-ma-wi or Pit River Indian, in Northeastern California, to
explain the cause of his cheeks and forehead being covered with tar,
represented a man falling, and, despite his efforts to save him,
trembling, growing pale (pointing from his face to that of a white
man), and sinking to sleep, his spirit winging its way to the skies,
which he indicated by imitating with his hands the flight of a bird
upwards, his body sleeping still upon the river bank, to which he
pointed. The tar upon his face was thus shown to be his dress of
mourning for a friend who had fallen and died.

Several descriptions of pure pantomime, intermixed with the more
conventionalized signs, will be found in the present paper. In
especial, reference is made to the Address of Kin Ch[=e]-[)e]ss,
Natci's Narrative, the Dialogue between Alaskan Indians, and
Na-wa-gi-jig's Story.

SOME THEORIES UPON PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE.

Cresollius, writing in 1620, was strongly in favor of giving
precedence to gesture. He says, "Man, full of wisdom and divinity,
could have appeared nothing superior to a naked trunk or block had he
not been adorned with the hand as the interpreter and messenger of
his thoughts." He quotes with approval the brother of St. Basil in
declaring that had men been formed without hands they would never have
been endowed with an articulate voice, and concludes: "Since, then,
nature has furnished us with two instruments for the purpose of
bringing into light and expressing the silent affections of the
mind, language and the hand, it has been the opinion of learned and
intelligent men that the former would be maimed and nearly useless
without the latter; whereas the hand, without the aid of language, has
produced many and wonderful effects."

Rabelais, who incorporated into his satirical work much true learning
and philosophy, makes his hero announce the following opinion:

"Nothing less, quoth Pantagruel [Book iii, ch. xix], do I believe than
that it is a mere abusing of our understandings to give credit to
the words of those who say that there is any such thing as a natural
language. All speeches have had their primary origin from the
arbitrary institutions, accords, and agreements of nations in their
respective condescendments to what should be noted and betokened
by them. An articulate voice, according to the dialecticians, hath
naturally no signification at all; for that the sense