The natives of Nicaragua, those, at least, of Aztec lineage, made use of parchment volumes, folded into a neat and portable compass, in which they painted, in red and black ink, certain figures, "by means of which," says the chronicler Oviedo, "they could express and understand whatever they wished, with entire clearness."[11] In South America the Peruvians had their _quipus_, cords of different lengths, sizes and colors, knotted in various ways, and attached to a base cord, an arrangement that was a decided aid to the memory, though it could not be connected with the sounds of words. There are also faint traces of figures, with definite meaning, among the Muyscas of Colombia; and the Moxos of Western Bolivia are said to have employed, as late as the last century, a method of writing, consisting of lines traced on wooden slabs.[12] Section 3. _Narrative Literature_. Of all forms of sustained discourse, we may reasonably suppose that of narration to have been the earliest. The incidents of the hunt were related at the return; the experiences of the past were told as a guide to the present; and the first efforts of the imagination are the depicting of fictitious occurrences, tradition and myth, story and history; these make up most of the entertainment of conversation to simple minds. Hence, in this primitive literature which I am describing, the narrative portion is the most abundant. There was a natural aspiration on the part of the natives, as soon as they had learned the art of writing, to preserve in permanent form the records, more or less authentic, of their tribes and ancestors. This desire of preserving the national history is shown by the works of Copway, Jones, Cusick, Ixtlilxochitl, and others, to whom I have already referred, who wrote in European tongues. If we begin our survey at the extreme north, we find the Eskimo, amid his depressing surroundings of eternal frost and months-long nights, an unwearied chatterbox, reciting his own and his ancestors' adventures, and weaving from his fancy the most extraordinary web of fictitious experiences. Once taught to write, hundreds of these tales were committed to paper by native hands. The manuscript collection of such in the possession of the learned and indefatigable Dr. Heinrich Rink contains considerably over two thousand pages, and the charming rendering into English, which has been published by his efforts, is a storehouse of weird conceptions and partly historic traditions about the past of Greenland and Labrador. What adds to their interest is that most of the illustrations are wood-cuts by native artists, truthfully setting forth their own mental pictures.[13]