Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... XXVIII THE ENIGMA SLOWLY UNRAVELS. INDUCTIVE AND STATISTICAL INVESTIGATION ASSUMING the inscription to be mixed French and English, in order to make some beginning, and beginning our guessing in earnest, we accounted the characters. According to frequency of use their order is as follows: "Judging from this, our chief vowels and consonants were probably X, =, 5,, A) *. We were left to conjecture; which was which? "Now, in extracts of length from English, e predominates so remarkably as, in ordinary cases, to be unmistakable. Had this been an extract of considerable length we might pronounce X to be e, and so go galloping on to the end. "But in an extract of this brevity from English we could not expect this infallibly to be true; the inscription was short; it was probably condensed, of technical words and phrases, being a surveyor's memorandum, and, probably, moreover, as we have surmised, in several languages; hence we could not expect the English scheme of letters to prevail; we had need to look for other clues, from which to prove this if we might. "We very soon discovered that the inscription was written backward. This was easily done. The clue by which we made sure of it was the arrangement of the words. It was, as will instantly be comprehended, a most important thing to know which way the inscription ran, forward or back, from right to left, from bottom to top, or to and fro as a plowman turns his furrows. These are tricks by which cryptograms are obscured to solution. "This question was answered by the consideration of three points, as follows: "'1st: --Were the words run together or divided? They were divided by intervening spaces of irregular length. "'2nd: --In writing, men begin near the margin of the sheet, usually..."
