188 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
is found to be almost indestructible and is much used for rock inserip- 
tions. 
Prof. Terrien de Lacouperie, op. cit., makes the following remarks: 
Symbolical marks, incised or drawn graftitti, not properly speaking inscriptions, 
have been found in Siberia, but they are not the expected primitive remains of ancient 
writings. Somearepurely Tartar, being written in Mongolian and Kalmuck; others, 
obviously the work of common people, may be Arabic, while some others found on 
the left bank of the Jenissei river are much more interesting. They seem to me to 
be badly written in Syriac, from right to left horizontally, before the time of the 
adaptation of this writing to the Uigurand Mongo]. The characters are still separated 
one from the other. On one of these graffitti found at the same place several Chinese 
characters, as written by common people, are recognizable. 
Some hieroglyphical graffitti have been discovered on rocks above Tomsk, on the 
right bank of the Tom river, in Siberia, They are incised at a height of more than 
20 feet. They are very rude, and somewhat like the famous Livre de Sauvages of 
merry fame in palwography. Quadrupeds, nen, heads, all roughly drawn, and some 
indistinct lines, are all that can be seen. It looks more like the pictorial figures 
which can be used as a means of notation by ignorant people at any moment than 
like an historical beginning of some writing. ‘There is not the slightest appearance 
of any sort of regularity or conventional arrangement in them. 
The last we have to speak of are quite peculiar and altogether different from the 
others. The signs are paintedinred. They are made of straight lines, disposed like 
drawings of lattices and window shades, and also like the tree characters of the 
Arabs and like the runes, They are met with near the Irtisch river, on a rock over 
the stream Smolank. 
Figs. 515, 721, 722, and 733, infra, have relation to this geographic 
region. 
It is to be remarked that some of the Siberian and Tartar characters, 
especially those reproduced by Schoolcraft, 1, Pls. 65 and 66, have a 
strong resemblance to the drawings of the Ojibwa, some of which are 
figured and described in the present work, and this coincidence is more 
suggestive from the reason that the totem or dodaim, which often is 
the subject of those drawings, is a designation which is used by both 
the Ojibwa and the Tartar with substantially the same sound and sig- 
nificance. 
—— 
a 
