GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 387 



self to instructing them in the useful arts. His tomb, consisting of k% a 

 little stone monument of a conical form, covered with an inscription in 

 hieroglyphical characters," was pointed out to the Hungarian visitor 

 in one of their principal villages. 



HIEROGLYPHICAL DISCOVERY. 



IT appears from a paper recently read in the Academy of Archae- 

 ology, at Rome, that Father Secchi has found a new interpretation of 

 the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which enables him to declare that most of 

 them are not mere tombstone inscriptions, as is generally assumed, but 

 poems. He has given several of his readings, which display great 

 ingenuity, and professes to be able to decipher the inscriptions on the 

 obelisk of Luxor, at Paris. 



ABORIGINES OF NICARAGUA. 



ACCORDING to a communication read at the American Association, 

 by Mr. E. G. Squier, there still exists in the interior of Nicaragua, 

 an Indian nation, who are descendants and representatives of the 

 once numerous and powerful Aztec nation, from which they were 

 originally a colony. They occupy what is now called the plain of 

 Leon, or the district between the northern extremity of Lake Nicar- 

 agua and the Pacific. The name at present applied to them, is 

 Nagrandians, or people of Nagrando. Mr. Squier states that he 

 has procured a considerable number of words of their language, and 

 on comparison, finds them to be almost precisely like the ancient 

 Mexican. The numerals used also show great coincidences with the 

 Mexican ones. Valdez, the Spanish historian, visited Nicaragua in 

 1526, and describes these people under the name of Niquirans, and 

 says of them, " They speak the Mexican language, and have the 

 same manners and appearance as the people of New Spain." There 

 are other evidences of a social and religious character, which con- 

 tribute towards strengthening the evidence of the present Indians 

 being originally Mexicans, or Aztecs. We have, therefore, says Mr. 

 Squier, the extraordinary phenomenon of a fragment of a great 

 aboriginal nation, widely separated from the parent stock, and 

 intruded among other and hostile nations ; yet from the comparative 

 lateness of the separation, or some other cause, still retaining its origi- 

 nal distinguishing features, so as to be easily recognized. The causes 

 which led to their migration from Mexico, can probably never be 

 accurately known. They have a tradition that they came from the 



9 * * 



north-west: and that they left their original seats in consequence of 

 having been overpowered by a hostile nation. 



EARLY AMERICAN ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS. 



IT is stated in the New York Express, that the Grinnell expedition 

 is not the first American expedition which has attempted to pcne- 



