were designed. The later findings of the Hittite, the Cypriot, those of Eridu, and old Chaldea, those in Arabia and elsewhere, confirmed this belief, while the writings thereon of the most profound scholars of France, Germany, America, Asia, and Great Britain made it certain that this was so. Upon further following out these investigations and collecting the ancient writings of America, I learned that in that so-called new continent^__from the north in Alaska and Canada, to Mexico and the central region, and onward to the older nations in Ecuador, Peru, and other places^__many ancient peoples there used hieroglyphic and phonetic, as well as ideographic, symbolic, and conventionally drawn figures as records of their mythologies, genealogies, traditions, histories, poems, and other matters and things. These American writings also contained similar forms for similar ideas, and were used upon the same plan as those in the so-called old continents. There also frequently was found a conventional drawing of human heads and figures, as well as those of animals, which were often intended to conceal from the common people what the chiefs, priests, scribes, or others instructed therein would readily recognise and understand. Continually pursuing these investigations and matters as opportunities served, or as I could procure materials from correspondents, I at length obtained a considerable number of specimens of writings in ancient characters of the old and new continents, and also learned that my correspondents, as well as scholars independent of my own investigations, were giving confirmations of my views as to the connections and correspondences between the ancient hieroglyphics, or the characters, and. the ideas they were intended to convey.
   More recently I obtained copies of the Easter Island inscriptions, and, upon examining them, was much impressed with the many instances in which the characters were similar to those used by the old civilised nations of America, who wrote in hieroglyphics or in phonetic characters. Learning that the natives of Easter Island were Polynesians, and not Americans, I thought it must be only a coincidence that the characters of the Easter Island inscriptions were like those of the American peoples, and that they must be a kind of writing used by Polynesians. I therefore began to search for similar Polynesian characters and writings of ancient or recent times. After a few years of investigation I discovered that the ancestors of the Polynesians did not write in these or in any other characters after they had passed beyond the Moluccas, on their way to the eastward, to the islands of the Pacific; and that, before then, their writings in ancestral times even were entirely different, and not in any particulars like those of the Easter Island inscriptions. Having quite satisfied myself upon these points, and wishing not to mislead myself, I began a fresh investigation into the writings of those who^__voyaging across