This book of pictures had been lying for many years in a
Paris library, before the Abbe Domenech unearthed it and
published it in facsimile, as a native American document of
high ethnological value. It contains a number of rude drawings
done in black lead and red chalk, in great part enormously in-
decent, though perhaps not so much with the grossness of the
savage as of the European blackguard. Many of the drawings
represent Scripture scenes, and ceremonies of the Eoman
Catholic church, often accompanied by explanatory German
words in the cursive hand, one or two of which, as the name
" Maria " written close to the rude figure of the Virgin Mary,
the Abbe succeeded in reading, though most of them were a
deep mystery to him. There are an evident Adam and Eve in the
garden, with " betruger " (deceiver) written against them ;
Adam and Eve sent out of Paradise, with the description
"gebant" (banished); a priest offering mass; figures with the
well-known rings of bread in their hands, explained as "fassdag "
(fast-day), and so on. There is no evidence of any connexion
with America in the whole matter, except that the document is
said to have come into the hands of a collector, in company with
1 Humboldt and Boapland, vol. ii. p. 239.
