[157] Arrears.—­Elphinstone’s India, vol. i. p. 372.

[158] Forbidden.—­“You shall not take money of him that is guilty of blood, but he shall die forthwith.”—­Numbers, xxxv. 31.

[159] Proved.—­See Pictet’s Origines Indo-Europeennes.  He mentions his surprise at finding a genuine Sanscrit word in Irish, which, like a geological boulder, had been transported from one extremity of the Aryan world to the other.  Pictet considers that the first wave of Aryan emigration occurred 3,000 years before the Christian Era.

[160] Writing.—­“Finally, Dudley Firbisse, hereditary professor of the antiquities of his country, mentions in a letter [to me] a fact collected from the monuments of his ancestors, that one hundred and eighty tracts [tractatus] of the doctrine of the druids or magi, were condemned to the flames in the time of St. Patrick.”—­Ogygia, iii. 30, p. 219.  A writer in the Ulster Arch.  Journal mentions a “Cosmography,” printed at “Lipsiae, 1854.”  It appears to be a Latin version or epitome of a Greek work.  The writer of this Cosmography was born in 103.  He mentions having “examined the volumes” of the Irish, whom he visited.  If this authority is reliable, it would at once settle the question.—­See Ulster Arch.  Journal, vol. ii. p. 281.

[161] Hand.—­A work on this subject has long been promised by Dr. Graves, and is anxiously expected by paleographists.  We regret to learn that there is no immediate prospect of its publication.

[162] Quipus.—­Quipus signifies a knot.  The cords were of different colours.  Yellow denoted gold and all the allied ideas; white, silver, or peace; red, war, or soldiers.  Each quipus was in the care of a quiper-carnayoe, or keeper.  Acorta mentions that he saw a woman with a handful of these strings, which she said contained a confession of her life.  See Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man for most interesting details on the subject of symbolic characters and early writing.

[163] Care.—­Annals of Boyle, vol. ii. p. 22. Essay, p. 82.

[164] Peoples.—­See Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. ii. p. 314, where the writer describes tombs sunk beneath a tumulus, about twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter, and also tombs exactly resembling the Irish cromlech, the covering slab of enormous size, being inclined “apparently to carry off the rain.”  In his account of the geographical sites of these remains, he precisely, though most unconsciously, marks out the line of route which has been assigned by Irish annalists as that which led our early colonizers to Ireland.  He says they are found in the presidency of Madras, among the mountains of the Caucasus, on the steppes of Tartary, in northern Africa, “on the shores of the Mediterranean they are particularly abundant,” and in Spain.

[165] Shells.—­Cat.  Ant.  R.I.A.; Stone Mat. p. 180.  The ethnographic phases of conchology might form a study in itself.  Shells appear to be the earliest form of ornament in use.  The North American Indians have their shell necklaces buried with them also.  See Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man.