r
markings seem to have had well-defined forms or marks, which were in
common use for this class of writing. Is it not most reasonable that a
race so far advanced in other ways would have perfected a method of
transmitting by marks of some kind their records to those who might come
after them? Again, where so much system is shown in the use of symbols,
it may be presumed that the same mark, wherever used in the same
position, carries with it a fixed meaning, alike at all times. Having
such a settled system of marks, there must be a key to the thoughts
concealed in writing, and quite likely the key for deciphering these
hieroglyphics will sometime be found on one of the yet undiscovered
hieroglyphic rocks in the high mountains or in the mounds not yet
examined. On the other hand, there can be no key to the inferior class
of pictographs made by the people who came after the mound, canal and
city builders had disappeared, for the crudely marked forms of reptiles,
animals or similar things had a meaning, if any, varying with each
individual maker.

Who were these people who formed a great nation here in the obscurity of
the remote past? Were they the ancient Phoenicians, who were not only a
maritime but a colonizing nation, and who, in their well-manned ships,
might have found their way to the southern coast of America ages since,
and from thence journeyed north? Or were they some of the followers of
Votan or Zamna, who had wandered north and founded a colony of the
Aztecs? Whoever these people were, and whichever way they came from, the
evidences of the great works they left behind them give ample proof that
they were superior and different from other races around them, and these
particular people may have been the "bearded white men," whom the
Indians had traditions of when Coronado's followers first came through
the Gila and Salt River valleys in 1526.

CHAPTER XIX.

OUR GREAT WATERWAYS

Importance of Rivers to Commerce a Generation Ago--The Ideal River
Man--The Great Mississippi River and Its Importance to Our Native
Land--The Treacherous Missouri--A First Mate Who Found a Cook's Disguise
Very Convenient--How a Second Mate Got Over the Inconvenience of
Temporary Financial Embarrassment.

During the last quarter of the century in which we write the figures "1"
and "8" in every date line, the steam railroad has, to a very large
extent, put out of joint the nose of the steamboat, just as, at the
present