Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/165

Rh had not returned, they might go back to their own land. Such was the string on which Le Boo tied a knot for each ship he met on his voyage, to keep in mind its name and country, and that one on which his father, Abba Thulle, tied first thirty knots, and then six more, to remember that Captain Wilson was to come back in thirty moons, or at least in six beyond.

This is so simple a device that it may, for all we know, have been invented again and again, and its appearance in several countries does not necessarily prove it to have been transmitted from one country to another. It has been found in Asia, in Africa, in Mexico, among the North American Indians; but its greatest development was in South America. The word quipu, that is, "knot," belongs to the language of Peru, and quipus served there as the regular means of record and communication for a highly organized society. Von Tschudi describes them as consisting of a thick main cord, with thinner cords tied on to it at certain distances, in which the knots are tied. The length of the quipus varies much, the main trunk being often many ells long, sometimes only a single foot, the branches seldom more than two feet, and usually much less. He has dug up a quipu, he says, towards eight pounds in weight, a portion of which is represented in the woodcut from which the accompanying (Fig. 15) is taken. The cords are often of various colours, each with its own proper meaning; red for soldiers, yellow for gold, white for silver, green for corn, and so on. This knot-writing was especially suited for reckonings and statistical tables; a single knot meant ten, a double one a hundred, a triple one a thousand, two singles side by side twenty, two doubles two hundred. The distances of the knots