The sculptures are sacred books, which the awe-inspired worshipper was required to revere and, probably, to salute with reverence. A single circle represented the sun, two circles in union the sun and moon--Baal and Ashtaroth. The wavy groove passing across the circle pointed to the course of water from the clouds, as discharged upon the earth. Groups of pit marks pointed to the stars or, more probably, to the oaks of the primeval temples. CHAPTER VI. PICTOGRAPHS GENERALLY. In leaving the geographic distribution of petroglyphs to examine the comprehensive theme of pictographs in general, the first and correct impression is that the mist of the archaic and unknown is also left and that the glow of current significance is reached. The pictographs of the American Indians are seldom if ever cryptographs, though very often conventional and sometimes, for special reasons, preconcerted, as are their signals. They are intended to be understood without a key, and nearly all of those illustrated below in the present work are accompanied by an interpretation. As the art is in actual daily use it is free from the superstition pending from remote antiquity. It will be noticed that a large proportion of the pictographs to be now presented, which are not petroglyphs, are Micmac, Abnaki, Dakota, and Ojibwa, although it is admitted that as many more could be obtained from other tribes, such as the Zuñi and the Navajo. The reason for the omission of details regarding the latter is that they are already published, or are in the course of publication, by Mrs. Stevenson, Dr. Matthews, Mr. Cushing, Mr. Fewkes, and other writers, who have specially devoted themselves to the peoples mentioned and the region occupied by them. The present writer obtained a valuable collection of birch-bark pictographs immemorially and still made by the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes of Abnaki in Maine, showing a similarity in the use of picture-writing between the members of the widespread Algonquian stock in the regions west of the great lakes and those on the northeastern seaboard. He also learned that the same art was common to the less known Montagnais and Nascapees in the wooded regions north of the St. Lawrence. This correlation of the pictographic practice, in manner and extent, was before inferentially asserted, but no satisfactory evidence of it had been furnished until the researches of the Bureau of Ethnology, in 1887 and 1888, made by the writer, brought into direct comparison the pictography of the Ojibwa with that of the Micmacs and the Abnaki. Many of the Indians of the last-named tribes still use marks and devices on birch bark in the ordinary affairs of life, especially as notices of departure and direction and for warning and guidance. The religious use of original drawings among them, which is still prominent among the Ojibwa, has almost ceased, but traces of it remain.