he more simple ciphers are concerned,
depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In
general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by
probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution,
until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us all
difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd'
is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this
consideration I should have begun my attempts with Spanish and French,
as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have
been written by a pirate of the Spanish, main. As it was, I assumed
the cryptograph to be English.

"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
divisions the task would have been comparatively easy. In such cases I
should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain
the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all,
I constructed a table thus:

Of the characters 8 there are 33.
; " 26
4 " 19
* " 16
[double dagger]) " 13
5 " 14
6 " 11
[dagger]1 " 8
o " 6
92 " 5
:3 " 4
? " 3
[pilcrow] " 2
--. " 1

"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
Afterward, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w
b k p q x z_. E predominates so remarkably, that an individual
sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the
prevailing character.

"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
the table is obvious--but, in this particular cipher, we shall only
very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we
will commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To
verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in
couples--for _e_ i