PICTUEE-WEITING AISfD WORD-WKITING. 105 



system. It is evident from Fig. 13 that some part of tlie cha- 

 racters he adopted were taken, of course without any reference 



be fen ghd qie mbe na po re{le) 



Fig. 13. 



to their sound, from the letters he had seen in print. His 

 system numbers 162 characters, representing mostly syllables, 

 as a, he, ho, dso, fen, gha; but sometimes longer articulations, 

 as sell, sediya, taro. Though it is almost entirely and purely 

 phonetic, it is interesting to observe that it includes three ge- 

 nuine pictm^e - signs, oo gha, "money;" °^ hit, "gun," (re- 

 presented by bullets,) and ^ cJd, " water," this last sign 



being identical with that which stands for water in the Egyptian 

 hieroglyphs. 



It appears from these facts that the transmission of the art 

 of writing does not necessarily involve a deta^ed transmission 

 of the particular signs in use, and the difficulty in tracing the 

 origin of the Semitic characters may result from their having 

 been formed, in great part or wholly, in the same way as the 

 American and African syliabaria. If this be the case, there is 

 an end of all hope of tracing them any further. 



In conclusion, it may be observed that the art of picture- 

 writing soon dwindles away in all countries when word-writing 

 is introduced ; yet there are a few isolated forms in which it 

 holds its own, in spite of writing and printing, at this very 

 day. The so-called Eoman numerals are still in use, and | 1 1 

 1 1 1 are as plain and indisputable picture-writing as any sign 

 on an Indian scroll of birch-bark. Why V ^-nd X mean five 

 and ten is not so clear, but there is some evidence in favour 

 of the view that it may have come by counting fingers or 

 strokes up to nine, and then making a stroke with another 

 across to mark it, somewhat as the deaf-and-dumb Massieu 

 tells us that, in his untaught state, his fingers taught him to 

 count up to ten, and then he made a mark. Loskiel, the Mo- 

 ravian missionary, says of the Iroquois, " They count up to ten^ 



