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We were fortunately just in time to come across a
man who had been able to make one species of
glyphs, though he was no longer, alas! in the
hey-day of his powers. We were shown one day in
the village a piece of paper taken from a Chilean
manuscript book, on which were somewhat roughly
drawn a number of signs, some of them similar to
those already known, others different from any we
had seen (fig. 99).
They were found to have been
derived from an old man lmown as Tomenika. He
was, by report, the last, man acquainted with an
inferior kind of rongo-rongo known as the "tau,"
but was now ill and confined to the leper colony.
We paid a visit to him armed with a copy of the
signs, but found him inside his doorway, which it
was obviously undesirable to enter, and
disinclined to give help; he acknowledged the
figures as his work, recited "He timo te
ako-ako," and explained some of the signs as
having to do with "Jesus Christ." The outlook was
not promising.
Another visit, however, was paid,
this time with Juan's assistance, and though the
old man appeared childish, and the natives frankly
said that "he had lost his memory," things went
better. He was seated on a blanket outside his
grass-hut, bare-legged, wearing a long coat and
felt hat; he had piercing brown eyes, and in
younger days must have been both good-looking and
intelligent. He asked if we wanted the tau, and
requested a paper and pencil. The former he put
on the ground in front of him between his legs,
and took hold of the pencil with his thumb above
and first finger below; he made three vertical
lines, first of noughts then of ticks, gave a name
to each line, and proceeded to recite. There was
no doubt about the genuineness of the recitation,
but he gabbled fast, and when asked to go slowly
so that it could be taken down, was put out and
had to begin again; he obviously used the marks
simply to keep count of the different phrases. At
the end of the visit he offered to write something
for next time. We left some paper with him, and
on our return two or three days later he had drawn
five lines horizontally, of which four were in the
form of the glyphs, but the same figure was
constantly repeated, and there were not more than
a dozen different symbols in all. It was said by
the escort to be "lazy writing." Tomenika
complained that the paper was not "big enough,"
so another sheet was given, which was put by the
side of the first and the lines continued in turn
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