20 JOHN KEADE ON THE LITEEAEY FACULTY 



before ovir era." {India : Wluit can it teach îis ? Lecture VII.) Aud then he goes on to state 

 that those ten books of hymns, containing 10,580 verses, were handed down from genera- 

 tion to generation for 3,000 years by memory alone. It seems incredible, yet Professor 

 Millier tells us that he had students who thus learned the Vedas by heart, who could not 

 only repeat them but repeat them with the proper accents and even correct mistakes in 

 his printed edition. The Gauls, he also reminds us, on the authority of Csesar, had their 

 Druidic literature only in their memories, having religious objections to committing it to 

 writing. The instances, indeed, that might be cited of oral transmission are so numerous 

 aud so well authenticated that, if there are any products of the American mvise said to be 

 thus handed down, we need not suspiciously reject them on that score. The late Patrick 

 McG-regor, in the Preliminary Dissertation to his " Grenuine Romains of Ossian," says : " The 

 allegation that it is impossible to commit to memory sirch a quantity of verse is disproved 

 by the fact that even at this day, when the lore is nearly extinct, a few individuals are to 

 be found through the Highlands who can repeat as many songs or hymns as would fill a 

 volume large enough to contain all that Ossian ever composed." The extraordinary 

 memory of Lord Macaulay may have been a case of survival to more degenerate and book- 

 relying days of just such a faculty as Mr. McGregor here speaks of Our own McGee, an- 

 other Celt, was similarly gifted. 



But the Americans were not all lacking in the means of recording their thoughts or 

 registering historic events. " South America," writes Dr. "Wilson, " had her miniature 

 picture-writing, her sculptured chronicles or l)asso-relievos, her mimetic pottery, her 

 defined symbolism and associated ideas of colours and her quipus. North America had 

 her astronomical science, her more developed though crude picture-writing, her totems, 

 pipe-sculpture and wampum ; and also her older mound-builders, with their standards 

 seemingly of weight as well as of mensuration." The qnipiij Prescott informs us, " was a 

 cord about two feet long, composed of different coloured threads, tightly twisted together, 

 from, which a quantity of smaller threads were suspended in the manner of a fringe. The 

 threads were of different colours and were tied into knots ; the word quipu, indeed, signifies 

 a knot." These colours denoted sensible objects or abstract ideas and by means of the 

 knots the Peruvians were able to calculate with great rapidity. Of course, siich an instru- 

 ment could not be used for writing in anything like our sense. It helped the memory by 

 way of association. 



The Mayas are credited by some writers with a sort of alphabet. Bishop Landa, 

 whose name it bears, says they had books, formed of long narrow strips of parchment, 

 folded map-wise, so as to have the appearance of a modern volume. By means of coloured 

 figures of a peculiar character, the value of which is as yet imperfectly known, they 

 could commit their thoughts, so as to be intelligible to each other, to the folded sheet. 

 Out of the holocaust which the Spanish clergy thought due to religion, four documents 

 have been saved. These are known as the Dresden Codex, the Codex Troano (from Senor 

 Tro y Ortolano), the Codex Peresianus (from Séiïor Pio Perez) and the Codex Cortesianus, 

 lately published bj' M. Léon de Rosny. Each of these codices has an interesting history, 

 but a word or two as to the last may suffice to show the manner in which such docu- 

 ments sometimes come to light. In 1876 or 187*7, a Spaniard offered to sell to the Biblio- 

 thèque Impériale of Paris an ancient American manuscript, photographed specimens indi- 

 cating its possible value. But the price asked was thought too high by the Bibliothèque 



