Speaking of the ancient Japanese, the Chinese chronicles relate: "They have no writing, but merely cut certain marks upon wood and make knots in cord."[593] In the very earliest myths of the Chinese we read of "knotted cords, which they used instead of characters, and to instruct their children."[594] Malte-Brun calls attention to the fact that "the hieroglyphics and little cords in use amongst the ancient Chinese recall in a striking manner the figured writing of the Mexicans and the Quipos of Peru."[595] "Each combination [of the quipu] had, however, a fixed ideographic value in a certain branch of knowledge, and thus the _quipu_ differed essentially from the Catholic rosary, the Jewish phylactery, or the knotted strings of the natives of North America and Siberia, to all of which it has at times been compared."[596] E. B. Tylor differs in opinion from Brinton. According to Tylor, "the quipu is a near relation of the rosary and the wampum-string."[597] The use of knotted cords by natives of the Caroline Islands, as a means of preserving a record of time, is noted by Kotzebue in several places. For instance: "Kadu kept his journal by moons, for which he made a knot in a string."[598] During the years of my service with the late Maj. Gen. Crook in the Southwest, I was surprised to discover that the Apache scouts kept records of the time of their absence on campaign. There were several methods in vogue, the best being that of colored beads, which were strung on a string, six white ones to represent the days of the week and one black or other color to stand for Sundays. This method gave rise to some confusion, because the Indians had been told that there were four weeks, or Sundays ("Domingos"), in each "Luna," or moon, and yet they soon found that their own method of determining time by the appearance of the crescent moon was much the more satisfactory. Among the Zuñi I have seen little tally sticks with the marks for the days and months incised on the narrow edges, and among the Apache another method of indicating the flight of time by marking on a piece of paper along a horizontal line a number of circles or of straight lines across the horizontal datum line to represent the full days which had passed, a heavy straight line for each Sunday, and a small crescent for the beginning of each month.