150 



paintings was common to the Toltecks, the 

 Tlascaitecks, the Aztecks, and several other 

 tribes, which, since the seventh century of our 

 era, appear successively on the elevated plain 

 of Anahuac ; but we nowhere find alphabetic 

 characters ; and we are led to think, that the 

 progressive perfection of symbolic signs, and 

 the facility with which objects are painted, 

 had prevented the introduction of letters. We 

 may cite, in support of this opinion, the ex- 

 ample of the Chinese, who during thousands 

 of years have contented themselves with four- 

 score thousand characters, composed of two 

 hundred and fourteen keys, or radical hiero- 

 glyphics : but do we not discover among the 

 Egyptians the simultaneous use of an alpha- 

 bet, and hieroglyphic writing, of which we have 

 undoubted proof in the valuable rolls of papyrus 

 found in the swathings of several mummies, 

 and represented in M. Denon's Picturesque 

 Atlas *? 



Kalm-f- relates, in his Travels in America, 

 that Mr. Verandrier had discovered, in 1746, 

 in the savannahs of Canada, nine hundred lea- 

 gues west of Montreal, a stone tablet fixed in a 

 sculptured pillar, and on which were strokes that 

 were taken for a Tartarian inscription. Several 

 Jesuits at Quebec assured the Swedish traveller 



* Denon's Voyage en Egypt, PI. 136 et 137. 

 t Kalni's Reise, B. Ill, p. 416. 



