306 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
express suspicion of a person the forefinger of the right hand is placed 
upon the side of the nose. It means tainted, not sound. It is used to 
give an unfavorable report of a person inquired of and to warn against 
such. 
The Chinese, though ready in gesticulation and divided by dialects, 
do not appear to make general use of a systematic sign language, but 
they adopt an expedient rendered possible by the peculiarity of their 
written characters, with which a large proportion of their adults are ac- 
quainted, and which are common in form to the whole empire. The in- 
habitants of different provinces when meeting, and being unable to con- 
verse orally, do not try to do so, but write the characters of the words 
upon the ground or trace them on the palm of the hand or in the air. 
Those written characters each represent words in the same manner as 
do the Arabic or Roman numerals, which are the same to Italians, Ger- 
mans, French, and English, and therefore intelligible, but if expressed 
in sound or written in full by the alphabet, would not be mutually un- 
derstood. This device of the Chinese was with less apparent necessity 
resorted to in the writer’s personal knowledge between a Hungarian 
who could talk Latin, and a then recent graduate from college who could 
also do so to some extent, but their pronunciation was so different as to 
occasion constant difficulty, so they both wrote the words on paper, 
instead of attempting to speak them. 
The efforts at intercommunication of all savage and barbarian tribes, 
when brought into contact with other bodies of men not speaking an 
oral language common to both, and especially when uncivilized inhabit- 
ants of the same territory are separated by many linguistic divisions, 
should in theory resemble the devices of the North American Indians. 
They are not shown by published works to prevail in the Eastern hem- 
isphere to the same extent and in the same manner as in North America. 
It is, however, probable that they exist in many localities, though not 
reported, and also that some of them survive after partial or even high 
civilization has been attained, and after changed environment has ren- 
dered their systematic employment unnecessary. Such signs may be, 
first, unconnected with existing oral language, and used in place of it; 
second, used to explain or accentuate the words of ordinary speech, or 
third, they may consist of gestures, emotional or not, which are only 
noticed in oratory or impassioned conversation, being, possibly, survivals 
of a former gesture language. 
From correspondence instituted it may be expected that a consider- 
able collection of signs will be obtained trom West and South Africa, 
India, Arabia, Turkey, the Fiji Islands, Sumatra, Madagascar, Ceylon, 
and especially from Australia, where the conditions are similar in many 
respects to those prevailing in North America prior to the Columbian dis- 
covery. In the Aborigines of Victoria, Melbourne, 1878, by R. Brough 
Smythe. the author makes the following curious remarks: ‘“Itis believed 
that they have several signs, known only to themselves, or to those 
