are read. When I am printing the grammars and vocabularies, I will have each of the characters, and the separate parts of these characters, clearly shown, with the equivalent or value of each in the language in which it was intended to be written and read, and also with its equivalent or interpretation in English. This will require the casting of special characters and their components, as type, to print or engrave from, which, with the care required, will, for so much work as will be necessary, require considerable time and expense; we must therefore now attempt by description to make it comprehensible.
   It will be seen, upon examination, that the characters of the inscriptions either represent natural objects or symbolic figures, adopted from forms and parts of birds, reptiles, tools, weapons, implements, parts of human bodies, and other things. The attempt, as in most other American hieroglyphics, is not to copy anything exactly, but to give a conventional representation that was well known and understood, as of an eagle or other bird, a turtle, a tortoise, a serpent, a toad, a frog; or of a sword, a sling, an axe; or an arm, a hand, a leg, a foot, a feather, a wing, a tail of a bird or animal, a sun, a moon, a star, the sky, the coast, a rainbow, with bows, arrows, cords, &c.; each done in several distinct ways, each of which had its own significance. Thus a serpent might either be a friend or an enemy, a priest or a wise-teacher; but not to be misunderstood because of the attitude or the additions thereto, a feathered-serpent^__such as so often appears in these inscriptions, and in all American writings^__can never be mistaken for an enemy, or anything but a priest or a wise-teacher, by anyone conversant with American writings. It will also be apparent upon careful inspection of the inscriptions that numbers of the hieroglyphics are compound, and are constructed of distinct portions, these parts being variously combined in the different characters. Each of these parts so combined is either a syllable or a complete word, but sometimes a letter^__either a vowel or a consonant^__of a proper name, or a grammatical form (pre- or post-position), or other part of speech. When combined either in one complete character either a sentence is formed, or a subsequent or a conjoined character makes the sentence complete, or adds to its force or significance.
   The symbol, or part of each character, gives it value in sound to the syllable or word it is used for, or intended to denote. Thus, an open hand reads ma, an abbreviation for maqui, "the hand;" but in this case it means "free." In a pointing position it means ma, "let us see;" in other positions it has several other meanings. The head of the eagle, when drawn fully and properly, reads either cuntur or condor, according to which dialect the inscription is in. If it is an eagle's head on a man's body it reads cuntur-runa, "an eagle-man." If the head has three feathers, and if an arm is drawn without a hand,