Fig. 145 a.—Petroglyph in Yezo, Japan.
Prof. Morse in a letter gives further information as follows: “The inscriptions are cut in a rough way on the side of the cliff on the northwestern side of the bay of Otaru. Otaru is a little town on the western coast of Yezo. The cliffs are of soft, white tufa about 100 feet high, and the inscriptions were cut possibly with stone axes, and were 1 inch in width and from ¼ to ½ of an inch in depth. They are about 4 feet from the ground.”
Prof. John Milne (a) remarks upon the same petroglyph, of which he gives a rude copy, as follows:
So far as I could learn the Japanese are quite unable to recognize any of the characters, and they regard them as being the work of the Ainos.
I may remark that several of the characters are like the runic m. It has been suggested that they have a resemblance to old Chinese. A second suggestion was that they might be drawings of the insignia of rank carried by certain priests; a third idea was that they were phallic; a fourth that they were rough representations of men and animals, the runic m being a bird; and a fifth that they were the handicraft of some gentleman desirous of imposing upon the credulity of wandering archæologists.
I myself am inclined to think that they were the work of the peoples who have left so many traces of themselves in the shape of kitchen middens and various implements in this locality. In this case they may be Aino.
Another illustration from Japan is presented in Pl. [LII].
INDIA.
Mr. Rivett-Carnac, in Archæologic Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks in Kumaon, India (a), gives a description of the glyphs copied in Fig. 146: