night, I learned another fact,
equally important, that the hieroglyphics were written in the royal
tongue, and could be read only by those connected by ties of blood with
the reigning family.

There was at first something ludicrous in the idea of communicating
thought by sound emitted in the way indicated above. In my wildest
dreams, the notion of such a thing being possible had never occurred to
my imagination. And when the naked fact was now demonstrated to me every
moment, I could scarcely credit my senses. Still, when I reflected that
night upon it, after I retired to rest, the system did not appear
unnatural, nor even improbable. Birds, I knew, made use of the same
musical tongue; and when but a boy, on the shores of the distant
Albemarle, I had often listened, till long after midnight, to the
wonderful loquacity of the common mocking-bird, as she poured forth her
summer strains. Who has not heard the turtle dove wooing her mate in
tones that were only not human, because they were more sadly beautiful?
Many a belated traveler has placed his hand upon his sword-hilt, and
looked suspiciously behind him, as the deep bass note of the owl has
startled the dewy air. The cock's crow has become a synonym for a paean
of triumph.

Remembering all those varieties in sound that the air is capable of,
when _cut_, as it were, by whistling, I no longer doubted that a
language could easily be constructed by analyzing the several tones and
giving value to their different modulations.

The ludicrousness of the idea soon gave place to admiration, and before
I had been domiciliated in the palace of the Princess a month, I had
become perfectly infatuated with her native language, and regarded it as
the most beautiful and expressive ever spoken by man. And now, after
several years have elapsed since its melodious accents have fallen upon
my ears, I hesitate not to assert that for richness and variety of tone,
for force and depth of expression, for harmony and sweetness--in short,
for all those characteristics that give beauty and strength to spoken
thought--the royal tongue of the aboriginal Americans is without a
rival.

For many days after my mysterious appearance in the midst of the great
city I have described, my fate still hung in the balance. I was examined
and re-examined a hundred times as to the mode of my entrance into the
valley; but I always persisted in making the same gestures, and pointed
to the sky as the region wh