155 
chance, or idle amusement, with letters or sylla- 
bic characters. Mr. Truter* relates, that in the 
southern extremity of Africa, among the Bet- 
juanas, he saw children busy in tracing on a 
rock, with some sharp instrument, characters 
which bore the most perfect resemblance with 
the P and the M of the Roman alphabet ; not- 
withstanding which, these rude tribes were per- 
fectly ignorant of writing. 
This want of letters observed in the new con- 
tinent, at the time of its second discovery by 
Christopher Columbus, leads to the idea, that 
the tribes of the Tartar or Mongul race, which 
we may suppose to have passed from the east of 
Asia to America, were not in possession of al- 
phabetical writing ; or what is less probable, 
that, having relapsed into barbarism under the 
influence of a climate less favorable to the display 
of the understanding, they had lost this won- 
derful art, known only to a very small number 
of individuals. We shall not here examine the 
question, whether the Devanagari alphabet is of 
remote antiquity on the banks of the Indus and 
the Ganges ; or whether, as Strabo'l" asserts 
from Megasthenes, the Hindoos were ignorant 
of writing before the conquests of Alexander. 
Farther to the east and the north in the region 
♦ Bertiich, Geogr. Ephem. B. 12, s. 67. 
t Strabo, lib. 15, p. 1035 — 1044. 
