36 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
One of the curious facts in connection with petroglyphs is the meager 
notice taken of them by explorers and even by residents other than 
the Indians, who are generally reticent concerning them. The present 
writer has sometimes been annoyed and sometimes amused by this 
indifference. The resident nearest to the many inscribed rocks at Ke 
jimkoojik Lake, Nova Scotia, described in Chapter 11, Section 1, was a 
middle-aged farmer of respectable intelligence who had lived all his life 
about 3 miles from those rocks, but had only a vague notion of their 
character, and with difficulty found them. A learned and industrious 
priest, who had been working for many years on the shores of Lake 
Superior preparing not only a dictionary and grammar of the Ojibwa 
Janguage, but an account of Ojibwa religion and customs, denied the 
present existence of any objects in the nature of petroglyphs in that 
region. Yet he had lived for a year within a mile of a very important 
and conspicuous pictured rock, and, on being convinced of his error by 
sketches shown him, called in his Ojibwa assistant and for the first time 
learned the common use of a large group of words which bore upon the 
system of picture-writing, and which he thereupon inserted in his dic- 
tionary, thus gaining from the visitor, who had come from afar to study 
at the feet of this supposed Gamaliel, much more than the visitor gained 
from him. 
AY 
EEE 
