GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE. 



283 



in Madagascar, and in a great part of Africa, seems to indicate : that 

 such ideas, may have elsewhere preceded a regular form of mytho- 

 logy- 



In the East, Luzon is one of the most distant points reached by the 

 invention of letters ; or having an aboriginal alphabet. I was there- 

 fore much struck with some coincidences in the forms of the letters, 

 between the obsolete Tagala alphabet and the ancient Geez of Abys- 

 sinia;* while in the intervening countries, the alphabets, although 

 various, are altogether unlike. It is true, the connexion is not en- 

 tirely obliterated; but may be traced in the mode of marking the 

 termination of words, among the Bugis and the Siamese. 



The multiplicity of alphabets in the East Indies, seems to offer a 

 parallel to the multiplicity of languages in America. And I have 

 found nothinor in all this, contravening the idea of a single source to 

 the invention. Many of the East India alphabets, are plainly de- 

 rived, one from another ; the form of the characters often being merely 

 modified, and new ones superadded : but I shall assume only, that 

 the knowledge of the existence of the art, was derived from abroad. 

 Much of the difference, between alphabetic writing in the East Indies 

 and our own more perfect system, seems attributable to the circum- 

 stance : that the alphabet transmitted to the West by Cadmus, had 

 been already elaborated. 



Let the reader in thought, divest himself of his education, and sup- 

 pose that his mother tongue had never been reduced to writing; and 

 further, that the possibility of representing sounds by signs, had sim- 

 ply arisen in his mind. The attempt to carry this idea into practice, 

 will be found by no means so easy as it may at first appear ; and by 

 most persons, would probably be abandoned. With the aid of exam- 

 ple, there would be a greater prospect of success ; but even, with 

 several characters communicated, their forms would probably be mo- 

 dified and new letters invented, for sounds difficult to be reconciled, or 

 that might be unrepresented. Where the model has been imperfect, 

 it has appeared to me, that the system founded upon it would natu- 

 rally be complicated; one requiring long study, and which might 

 serve for a profession, a means of procuring support; in short, more 

 resembling the inconvenient alphabets of the East India islands, than 

 the simple analysis of sounds which we have in the Roman letters. 



* I refer to the ' Nubian Alphabet,' of Frye's Pantographia. 



