314 FOSSIL MEN. 



would have done those of the encampment of a neigh- 

 bouring tribe. They provided themselves with long 

 wands, and as they dropped down the Missouri, made 

 a notch for every house. The rods were soon filled, 

 and then they provided others ; but still the numbers 

 grew, and at length, when the steamer reached the 

 city of St. Louis, they threw their tallies into the river, 

 and gave up the hopeless attempt. The tally and its 

 analogues mark man as a reckoning animal with 

 mathematical possibilities, and while they take us 

 very near to the beginning of all things in this direc- 

 tion, they introduce us to a being so like ourselves, 

 that when we are required to reckon up any large 

 number, we are fain to have recourse to his primitive 

 expedient. Pre-historic and antediluvian genealogies 

 must have been kept on tallies akin in principle to 

 the knotted cords of the Peruvians; and it is not im- 

 possible that some of these may yet be recovered for 

 comparison with the numbers in Genesis which have 

 excited so much scepticism and controversy. We are 

 told that the Peruvians thus kept the reckoning of the 

 events of their lives, and their" personal quipas were 

 buried with them ; and this even in the case of young 

 children, the events of whose lives might be repre- 

 sented by a very few knots. Careful search should 

 be made in all repositories of the remains of pre- 

 historic men for records of this kind; and judging 

 from American analogies, it may be found that some 

 of the unintelligible marks on old stone monuments 

 are intended to denote dates and numbers. 



