with the conclusion that though the Mayas and Nahuas were probably descendants of foreign stock, their civilization, so far as we are able to judge from their arts, was indigenous—developed upon our soil, and offering but few analogies to any other. _Hieroglyphics._—No well authenticated Mound-builder hieroglyphics have as yet come to light. The Grave Creek Mound tablet we believe is now shown unquestionably to be an archæological fraud. The Cincinnati tablet figured in our first chapter seems to bear some symbolic signs upon its face, but no resemblance can be traced between them and any other known hieroglyphic signs. The Davenport tablet if genuine is of great interest in that it abounds in hieroglyphics, some of which are not unlike some of the signs employed by the Aztecs; besides, the element of picture-writing so common to that people plays a prominent part on both sides of that mysterious stone. Col. Charles Whittlesey, in the second chapter of his _Report to the Centennial Commission of Ohio_ (already cited), has figured and described rock sculpture near Barnesville, Newark, Independence, Amherst and Wellsville, most of which are of the lowest grade of savage art, and we think can only be attributed to the red Indian. Mr. W. H. Holmes has furnished specimens of picture-writing of a rude character found engraven in the rocks of the cañon of the Rio Mancos and San Juan, but there is no evidence that they are or are not the work of the Cliff-dwellers whose works abound upon neighboring rocks.[598] We have already called attention to the tablets of hieroglyphics at Palenque, Copan and in Yucatan, a specimen of which is shown in a cut on page 390. The accompanying cut, employed by Stevens, Baldwin and Bancroft, show the thirty-six squares of hieroglyphics engraven upon the top of a Copan altar.