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 hierog-lyphic 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 writings 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 Rhetorica Christiana, auctore Didaco Valades j Romse, 
1579, P. 2, c. 27, p. 93. Acosta, Lib. 6, c. 7. 
