Is it not obvious, however, that the news had
been transmitted orally, and that the crude carvings on the stick merely
indicated an attempt to give verisimilitude to the intelligence--the
wavy line indicating the creek, and the notch the fatal waterhole. If
not, then a black's message-stick is a model of literary condensation,
their characters marvels of comprehensiveness and exactitude.
Another letter is before me--one of the best specimens with regard to
workmanship I have ever seen. Upon one edge of a piece of brown wood 6
inches long, 1 inch broad, flat and rounded off at the edges and ends,
there are five notches, and on the opposite edge a single notch. Close
to the end is a faint, crude representation of a broad arrow, below
which is a confusion of small cuts, in a variety of angles, none quite
vertical, some quite horizontal. On the reverse is a single--almost
perpendicular--cut, and a bold X, and near the point, two shallow,
indistinct diverging cuts. So far no one to whom the letter has been
submitted has given a satisfactory reading. Blacks frankly admit that
they do not understand it. They examine it curiously, and almost
invariably remark--"Some fella mak' em.
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