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of monosyllabic languages^ as in that of the 
Tartarian, Samoiede, Ostiack, and Karnt- 
schadale tongues, the use of letters wherever it is 
at present found, was introduced very late. It 
seems indeed probable, that it was the Christian 
sect of Nestorians, who communicated the 
Stranghelo alphabet to the Oighours and the 
Mantchou Tartars ; an alphabet, which in the 
northern regions of Asia is still more recent, than 
the Runic characters in the north of Europe. 
We need not, therefore, suppose the communi- 
cations between eastern Asia and America to 
have been of very remote antiquity, in order to 
comprehend why this latter part of the world 
had not been instructed in an art, which for a 
long series of ages was unknown except in 
Egypt, in the Phoenician and Grecian colonies, 
and in the small space lying between the 
Mediterranean, the Oxus, and the Persian 
gulf. 
When we examine the history of those nations 
among which the use of letters is unknown, we 
find almost every where, in both hemispheres, 
that men have attempted to paint the objects 
which strike their imagination, to represent 
things by indicating a part for the whole, to 
compose pictures by grouping figures in symbo- 
lical sketches, and thus to perpetuate the 
memory of certain remarkable facts. The 
Delaware Indian, in scouring the woods, carves 
