r the United States, from the Dighton
Rock, Massachusetts (_v_. pp. 27, 28), to the Kern River Canyon in
California, and from the Florida Cape to the Mouse River in Manitoba.
The identity of the Indians with their ancient progenitors is further
proved by relics, mortuary customs, linguistic similarities, plants and
vegetables, and primitive industrial and mechanical arts, which have
remained constant throughout the ages." The pictographs of the Kern
River Canyon, according to the same writer, were inscribed on the rocks
there "about five thousand years ago."

A more advanced form of picture-writing is frequently found in the Mayan
and other inscriptions and manuscripts. Two objects are represented,
whose names, when pronounced together, give a sound which suggests the
name to be recorded or remembered. Thus, the name Gladstone may be
expressed in this manner by two pictures, one a laughing face (i. e.,
"happy" or "glad"), the other a rock (i. e., "stone"). It is exactly the
same contrivance that is used to construct the puzzle called a "rebus."

A third form of hieroglyphic was by devising some conventional mark or
symbol to suggest the initial sound of the name to be recorded. Such a
mark or character would be a "letter," in fact; and thus the prehistoric
alphabets were arrived at, not only among the early Mayans of Yucatan,
etc., but among the prehistoric peoples of Asia, as the Chinese, the
Hittites, etc., as well as the primeval Egyptians. Many of the
sculptures in Copan and Palenque to which we have referred contain
pictographs and hieroglyphs. A Spanish Bishop of Yucatan drew up a Mayan
alphabet in order to express the hieroglyphs on monuments and
manuscripts in Roman letters; but much more data are needed before
scholars will read the ancient Mayan-Aztec tongues as they have been
enabled to understand the Egyptian inscriptions or the cuneiform records
of Babylonia. For the American hieroglyphs we still lack a second Young
or Champollion.

There are three famous manuscripts in the Mayan character:

1. The Dresden Codex, preserved in the Royal Library of that city.
It is called a "religious and astrological ritual" by Abbe
Brasseur.

2. Codex Troano, in Madrid, described in two folios by Abbe
Brasseur.

3. Codex Peresianus, named from the wrapper in which it was found,
1859, which had the name "Perez." It is also known as Codex
Mexicanus.

In Lord Kingsborough's grea