LANGUAGE. 
379 
and fourteen of those symbols, now they have increased to 
the extraordinary number of twenty thousand ! hence the 
difficulty of acquiring a perfect knowledge of the Chinese 
language and literature. 
This probably would have been the case with the Poly- 
nesian had they used hieroglyphics, as they seem to originate 
with monosyllabic tongues. The Maori has only fourteen 
letters, and yet it is as expressive as simple, it was the 
missionary who fixed its sounds, and introduced our charac- 
ters ; they had neither the quipus nor wampum, but only a 
board shaped like a saw, which was called he rakau walcapa- 
paranga , or genealogical board ; it was in fact a tally, having 
a notch for each name, and a blank space to denote where 
the male line failed and was succeeded by that of the female ; 
youths were taught their genealogies by/epeating the names 
of each to which the notches referred.* 
The Maori used a kind of hieroglyphical or symbolical 
way of communication ; a chief inviting another to join 
in a war party sent a tattooed potatoe and a fig of tobacco 
bound up together, which was interpreted to mean that 
the enemy was a Maori and not European by the tattoo, 
and by the tobacco that it represented smoke, he therefore 
roasted the one and eat it, and smoked the other, to show 
* The letters of the more ancient alphabets have names which are appropriate 
to their form, or have reference even to religion ; thus those of the Irish 
characters have each the name of a tree, and probably preserve a remem- 
brance of grove worship ; perhaps the most ancient as well as simplest form of 
letters is the cuneiform, made by the varied disposition of straight lines ; from 
them we seem to have derived our old numerals, and from the same part the 
supposed cradle of our race, those still in use. The ancient British or Welsh 
alphabet may, from its close resemblance to the cuneiform, be the most ancient 
now in use ; with four or five exceptions, the characters which compose it are 
the Etruscan or Pelasgic ones. The old Britons used to cut their letters upon 
sticks or staves, which were either squared or formed into three sides, several 
of these were joined in a frame called Peithynen (elucidator) and sometimes 
Coel bren (a token stick), by which latter term the alphabet was generally 
designated ; sometimes they graved their letters on a slate with an iron style, 
or flint stone, and this slate was a coelvain (token stone) ; they also colored 
them on wood;* writing on sticks, alluded to in Ezek. xxxvii. 16, 20 ; Numb, 
xvii. 2. 
* Williams’ Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry , or Ancient British Church. 
