148 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
have been fixed by the labours of Messrs. Schmidt, Pierides and 
others, who show that their sounds have little correspondence with 
those expressed by similar Semito-European letters. Besides the 
Cypriote, the only other alphabet of like character, the powers of 
which are certainly known, is the Corean of far Eastern Asia, which 
furnished me with phonetic values of forms belonging to the Etruscan 
and other old Turanian syllabaries, as the Cypriote also had done. 
From Corea, my researches extended in two directions, the one west- 
ward towards Siberia, the other eastward to Japan and this con- 
tinent. To take the Japanese first, I am indebted to the kindness of 
the Rev. John Edwards for the work of Ban Nobutomo on the 
ancient Japanese alphabet. This, as he and other Japanese gram- 
marians are agreed, is none other than the Corean, although, in the 
various inscriptions, it presents many diverging forms. Crossing over 
to America, the only traces of aboriginal alphabetic writing known 
to me, which I accept as genuine, are the Grave Creek stone, a true 
copy of which I owe to Colonel Whittlesey, the Brush Creek stone, 
of which Mr. Hilder, of St. Louis, sent me a photograph, and the 
Davenport stones, for the knowledge of which I am indebted to the 
late Dr. Farquharson.* Each of these contains characters agreeing 
with the Corean; and the larger Davenport stone, by its semi- 
hieroglyphic forms, suggests a Hittite origin. The connection of the 
Mound Builders with the Aztec population of Mexico is conceded by 
many of the most scientific students of American antiquity. The 
system alluded to is that from which the Cypriote syllabary was derived. Again (p. 32) he 
continues: ‘‘ A comparison of the forms of the characters in the Cypriote syllabary with those 
of the Hamathite (Hittite) inscriptions seems to me to render it highly probable that both have 
the same source.” 
One of the earliest workers in the field of Cypriote Paleeography is Professor Moritz Schmidt, 
of Jena. See his work ‘ Die Inschrift von Idalion, und das kyprische Syllabar.” Also many 
papers in the Trans. Socy. Bib. Archzol. on the subject by Dr. Birch, Dr. Paul Schroeder, 
Messrs. D. Pierides and 1. N. Hall In Germany the names of Deecke, Siegismund, and 
Brandis, should be added to that of Schmidt. The Cypriote syllabary is accessible to most 
readers in Cesnola’s ‘‘ Salaminia,” where the values are given. 
8 As there has been much controversy in the United States regarding these inscriptions T 
cannot allow this notice of them to pass without deprecating the tone of those who on @ priori 
grounds have assailed their genuineness and cast aspersions of the most serious kind upon the 
characters of men whose only title to receive anything but respect at the hands of their fellows, 
was their being connected with the finding of the relics, See an able defence of the Daven- 
port Academy of Natural Science in connection with the tablets by Mr. Charles E. Putnam: 
Elephant Pipes and Inscribed Tablets of the Mound Builders, Davenport, Iowa, 1885. I mean 
no disrespect to American scholarship when I say that there was not knowledge enough in the 
United States to forge these inscriptions. There are other#®so-called Mound Builder inserip- 
tions besides those for which I vouch from internal evidence, of which I say nothing. 
