24 JOHN EEADB : 



secret of alphabetic writing. But if we look for the first germ of the discovery, we must 

 go back to a period compared with which even Egypt's earliest dynasty is recent. The 

 brooding hunter of the early world, who traced on his cave-wall the rudely pictured story 

 of his rough and peril-fraught life, was the father of literature as well as of art. In a 

 paper contributed to the Art Journal some time ago on " Field Sports in Art," Mr. Eichard 

 Jeffries, discussing the engraved tusk found in the cave of La Madeleine, asked whether 

 the ignorant savage of that long-lost day could have been capable of such work. Happily, 

 apart from the authenticity of the find itself and other finds of similar quality, there is 

 ample evidence in our own time of the existence amongst the lowest races of like artistic 

 taste and skill. " Even the most degraded and savage of the Bushman race," wrote the 

 late Sir Bartle Frere,' " who live on insects, reptiles and carrion, and through long privation 

 have been reduced almost to the level of the beasts of the field, have a power of deline- 

 ating and colouring animals, human beings, and other forms with which they are familiar, 

 with a facility and truth which would be wonderful in a civilized population." Similar 

 skill as draughtsmen has been observed among Australians and, as we shall see, some of 

 the American Indians excelled and still excel in the same process. Whether the unknown 

 artists of the caves came in the course of time to apply their skill to mnemonic, epistolary, 

 or historic uses, we do not certainly know, but from what took place among savages of 

 later date, it is not impossible — it is even probable — that they did. The employment of 

 picture-writing for purposes of communication has been ascertained to be common to 

 almost all rude tribes. In some cases the development was interrupted at a low stage ; in 

 others, it reached a point more advanced, while only in a very few instances has it resulted 

 in the elaboration of an alphabetic system. "We can easily imagine that men who could 

 carve, with precision and even beauty of finish, mammoths, horses, rein-deer, bears, foxes, 

 and human figures, in spite of disadvantages of implements and material, would be 

 intelligent enough to recognize the use to which such carvings might be put for mnemonic 

 or historic purposes. The picture, which, in the first place, showed merely the surround- 

 ings and occupation of the draughtsman, might be made to stand for himself or, by atti- 

 tude or position, to indicate his condition, intention, hopes or needs. Of pictorial 

 representation of this kind instances abound." A further step is gained when 

 the figure of an object is made to suggest, not itself, but some quality which it calls 

 up in the mind, as when the fox becomes the symbol for cunning, the bird, for 

 swiftness, and so on. The next stage is what is well known as the rebus, in which 

 things are put for words, and an important advance is made when the pictures stand no 

 longer for the objects they suggest, but for the sounds of those objects. Altogether, start- 

 ing with the simple picture, Isaac Taylor enumerates five stages in the invention of 

 the alphabet. These are the simple picture, the pictorial symbol, the verbal sign, the 



' Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute for the year 1880-81, p. 140. 



- A very good example of it is the pictograph of an Indian petition to the President of the United States, whidi 

 was originally published by Schoolcraft, but has since done duty in several works. Therein the chiefs arc repre- 

 sented Iw their totems — the crane, marten, tortoise, liear and cat-fish. The eyes of the iiotitioners are joined by 

 means of lines witli tliose of the head-chief (Oshcabawis) to express their unity of view, and their liearts with his 

 to denote unity of sentiment. An exterior line connects the head of Oslicabawis with the lakes claimed by the 

 petitioning tribes. In the signatures of the Indians to the Selkirk Treaty (1817) their totems not only take the place 

 of the ordinary cross of the illiterate, but are also set opposite the tracts of country tliat they claim. Morris's 

 Treaties of Canada, p. 298. 



