186 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
gested that they have a resemblance to old Chinese. A second suggestion was that 
they might be drawings of the insignia of rank carried by certain priests; a third 
idea was that they were phallic; a fourth that they were rough representations of 
men and animals, the runic m being a bird; and a fifth that they were the handi- 
craft of some gentleman desirous of imposing upon the credulity of wandering 
archeologists. 
I myself am inclined to think that they were the work of the peoples who have 
left so many traces of themselves in the shape of kitchen middens and various im- 
plements in this locality. In this case they may be Aino. 
Another illustration from Japan is presented in Pl. Li. 
- INDIA. 
Mr. Rivett-Carnac, in Archeologic Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on 
Rocks in Kumaon, India (a), gives a description of the glyphs copied in 
Fig. 146: 
At a point about two miles and a half south of Dwara-Hath, and twelve miles 
north of the military station of Ranikhet in Kumaon, the bridle-road leading from 
the plains through Naini Tal and Ranikhet to Baijnath, and thence on to the cele- 
brated shrine of Bidranath, is carried through a narrow gorge at the mouth of which 
is a temple sacred to Mahadeo, * * * which is locally known by the name of 
Chandeshwar. 
About two hundred yards south of the temple, toward the middle of the defile, 
rises a rock at an angle of forty-five degrees presenting a surface upon which, in a 
space measuring fourteen feet in height by twelve in breadth, more than two hun- 
dred cups are sculptured. They vary from an inch and a half to six inches in diame- 
ter and from half an inch to an inch in depth, and are arranged in groups composed 
of approximately parallel rows. 
The cups are mostly of the simple types and only exceptionally sur- 
rounded by single rings or connected by grooves. 
SIBERIA. 
“© 
N.S. Shtukin (a) referring to certain picture-writings on the cliffs of 
the Yenisei river, in the Quarterly Isvestia of the Imperial Geograph- 
ical Society for 1882, says: “These are figured, but are not particularly 
remarkable, except as being the work of invaders from the far south, 
perhaps Persians. Camels and pheasants are among the animals repre- 
sented.” 
Philip John von Strahlenberg, in An Historico-Geographical Descrip- 
tion of the North and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia, ete., reported 
inscriptions relating to the chase, on the banks of the river Yenesei. 
He says of one: “It takes its characteristic features from the natural 
history of the region; and we may suppose it to embrace rude repre- 
sentations of the Siberian hare, the cabarda or musk deer and other 
known quadrupeds.” 
He also furnishes a transcript of inseriptions found by him on a pre- 
cipitous rock on the river Irtish. This rock, which is 36 feet high, is 
isolated. It has four sides, one of which faces the water and has a 
number of tombs or sepulchral caves beneath. <All of the fou faces 
