157 



strokes on the bark of the trees, to mark the 

 number of men and women he has killed of the 

 enemy : the conventional sign, which indicates 

 the skin stripped from the head of a woman, dif- 

 fers by a simple stroke only from that which 

 characterizes the scalp of a man. Were we to 

 call hieroglyphic every painting- of ideas by 

 things, there is not, as Mr. Zoega* has well re- 

 marked, a corner of the Globe, in which we 

 should not find hieroglyphical writing- ; but this 

 same learned person, who has deeply studied the 

 Mexican paintings, observes also, that we must 

 not confound hieroglyphical writing with the re- 

 presentation of an event, with pictures in which 

 the objects are in the state of action with one 

 another. 



The first missionaries who visited America, 

 Valades and Acosta -f, have already called the 

 Azteck paintings a writing similar to that of the 

 Egyptians. If Kircher, Warburton, and other 

 learned men, have since contested the propriety 

 of this expression, it is because they have not 

 distinguished the paintings of a mixed kind, in 

 which real hieroglyphics, sometimes curiological, 

 sometimes tropical, are added to the natural re- 

 presentation of an action, from simple hierogly- 



* Zoega, p. 525—534. 



t Rhetcrica Christiana, auctore Didaco "Valades; Romae, 

 1579, P. 2, c. 27, p. 93. Acosta, Lib. 6, c. 7. 



