Both Mongol and Manchu are cultivated languages employing modified forms of the Uiguric (Turki) script, which is based on the Syriac introduced by the Christian (Nestorian) missionaries in the seventh century. It was first adopted by the Mongols about 1280, and perfected by the scribe Tsorji Osir under Jenezek Khan (1307-1311). The letters, connected together by continuous strokes, and slightly modified, as in Syriac, according to their position at the beginning, middle, or end of the word, are disposed in vertical columns from left to right, an arrangement due no doubt to Chinese influence. This is the more probable since the Manchus, before the introduction of the Mongol system in the sixteenth century, employed the Chinese characters ever since the time of the Kin dynasty. None of the other Tungusic or north-east Siberian peoples possess any writing system except the Yukaghirs of the Yasachnaya affluent of the Kolymariver, who were visited in 1892 by the Russian traveller, S. Shargorodsky. From his report[631], it appears that this symbolic writing is carved with a sharp knife out of soft fresh birch-bark, these simple materials sufficing to describe the tracks followed on hunting and fishing expeditions, as well as the sentiments of the young women in their correspondence with their sweethearts. Specimens are given of these curious documents, some of which are touching and even pathetic. "Thou goest hence, and I bide alone, for thy sake still to weep and moan," writes one disconsolate maid to her parting lover. Another with a touch of jealousy: "Thou goest forth thy Russian flame to seek, who stands 'twixt thee and me, thy heart from me apart to keep. In a new home joy wilt thou find, while I must ever grieve, as thee I bear in mind, though another yet there be who loveth me." Or again: "Each youth his mate doth find; my fate alone it is of him to dream, who to another wedded is, and I must fain contented be, if only he forget not me." And with a note of wail: "Thou hast gone hence, and of late it seems this place for me is desolate; and I too forth must fare, that so the memories old I may forget, and from the pangs thus flee of those bright days, which here I once enjoyed with thee." Details of domestic life may even be given, and one accomplished maiden is able to make a record in her note-book of the combs, shawls, needles, thimble, cake of soap, lollipops, skeins of wool, and other sundries, which she has received from a Yakut packman, in exchange for some clothes she has made him. Without illustrations no description of the process would be intelligible. Indeed it would seem these primitive documents are not always understood by the young folks themselves. They gather at times in groups to watch the process of composition by some expert damsel, the village "notary," and much merriment, we are told, is caused by the blunders of those who fail to read the text aright.