nations, according to other indicating symbols, all widely known. These shields, feathers, chevrons, bands, and other symbols, have existed and been used by the successive generations of the same peoples from very remote times, and were generally prevalent until the Spanish Conquest, and are still retained by many clans and peoples.
   It will thus be perceived, that using the knowledge I have acquired of the American mode of forming and using their hieroglyphics or characters, and finding that the Easter Island inscriptions were derived from those of America, I employ this mode of deciphering the syllables or words, and adding these together in the indicated manner; then let them, when so conjoined, tell their own story in the language they are found to be written in; and then simply translate this into English. This explanation will make comprehensible, to even those persons least acquainted with such matters, how I decipher and read the Easter Island inscriptions. Those who have studied such hieroglyphic writings, will recognise, that the key to the decipherment being secured, every additional tablet read confirms the trust to be placed in the method employed, when it enables the reader to see that every sentence deciphered falls properly into its place in the story the inscription is relating. In the translations I have made, I find that the persons, places, and events introduced into some of the inscriptions are confirmed by the Spaniards, or other independent writers' accounts; although in the mass of the narratives they give clan, tribal, and family histories, that in no other written documents have been preserved, going back centuries before the Spanish Conquest.
   When my work giving the value and meaning of every part of a character is published, every one who wishes to read these important historical and mythological inscriptions, will be able to do so without difficulty; but by my writing this, and its publication in this Journal in which my translations of inscription of Easter Island invocations, &c., appeared, it will serve to show how I learned to make those translations, and to interpret what for so many generations had remained unknown, and will explain to anyone who is interested therein how such decipherment was performed.