MATERIALS TO WRITE UPON BEFORE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 



()41 



Fin. 2. Australian message stick. 



FiG. 3. Bird mound near Milwaukee. 



South America used grains of corn or variously colored pebbles, 

 which they arranged in ascertain order, for the purpose of express- 

 ing certain ideas, trans- 

 mitting messages, or f\ /J'X'^YWj^fM^S^^WW^^ 

 recounting the great 

 deeds of their nation. 

 Later these same peo- 

 ples employed strings 



of varying lengths and colors, in which they made knots and loojis 

 at greater or less intervals. This is called the " quippo.*' 



We must mention likewise the 

 small sticks of the Scythians, the 

 stick of memory ; '' stick messages '' 

 of the Australians, means employed 

 to correspond at a distance. 

 (Fig. ±)^ 



What shall we say of the mounds 

 (tig. :■)),'' raised burial places, of 

 North America, abounding particu- 

 larly in Ohio and AYisconsin, and 

 the outline of whose base assumes 

 the shape of an animal — ({uadruped, bird, ser})ent, lizard, or turtle^ 

 It is pennissible to supi)ose that these forms designated the totem 

 of the tribe or the individual 

 Avho reposed in these tombs. 



The strangely shaped rocks, 

 ^vith a length of more than 12 

 kilometers, which project 

 from the Avaters of the Nani- 

 Ou, in Upper I^aos (tig. 4),'' 

 and the trees and bushes cut 

 in the shape of animals which 

 one sees on l)oth banks of the 

 river, are indeed rather diffi- 

 cult to explain. 



After this digression, some- 

 what beside the subject, l)Ut Fk, 4 Rocks liewn m Til.' torm of anmials and 

 ,11 1 , the human head in Nam-Ou. 



nevertheless necessary, let us 



return to the materials upon which writing has been done. 



a Roth (W. E. ): Ethnological Studies Among the North-West-Central Abu- 

 ligines. Brisbane, London, 1897, 8°. i)l. xviii. No. o2. 



& Lapham (I. A.) : The Antiquities of Wi8C(»nsin ( Suiitlisonian Contributions 

 to Knowledge. 1885, 4°, Vol. VII •). 



c Neis (P.): Voyage dans le Iluut-Laos (Tour du Monde, 1885,- p\>. 51 

 and 83) 



SM 1UU4 -11 



