Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/19

 the cut was repeated, until this curious calendar had, when the Doctor saw it, run up to eighty years. Again, the North American Indian spoke of 'coming over the trail of many moons from the land of the setting sun,' to mean that he had travelled from the west for many months. For any period less than a lunar month, he would use the term 'nights,' not weeks.

9. The Asiatic Indian, long before the Christian era, speaking of the moon, meant a month; he had one word. only for the two things, and that word carried the idea of measuring, seeing that time was measured by moons, nights, and winters long before it was reckoned by suns, days, and years. De Foe, in attributing the keeping of a calendar. to Crusoe, practically gives us a description of the Runic calendars of Scandanavia and Britain eight hundred years ago. He says for his immortal hero that "upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again as that one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.'

10. Such, then, were the quaint methods adopted by the barbarians of keeping a tally of the years. We pass now to the domain of civilization. The Savants of China, while Norman and Saxon were fighting with each other in England, and unrest, ignorance, and warfare were the sad symbols of European progress, had begun to preserve their opinion in printed characters. Their philosophy and religion were old and established when Christianity was