The character of the manuscript is very curious, and its translation
was exceedingly difficult. The material on which it is written
resembles nothing used for such purposes on Earth. It is more like a
very fine linen or silken web, but it is far closer in texture, and
has never been woven in any kind of loom at all like those employed in
any manufacture known to history or archaeology. The letters, or more
properly symbols, are minute, but executed with extraordinary
clearness. I should fancy that something more like a pencil than a
pen, but with a finer point than that of the finest pencil, was
employed in the writing. Contractions and combinations are not merely
frequent, but almost universal. There is scarcely an instance in which
five consecutive letters are separately written, and there is no
single line in which half a dozen contractions, often including from
four to ten letters, do not occur. The pages are of the size of an
ordinary duodecimo, but contain some fifty lines per page, and perhaps
one hundred and fifty letters in each line. What were probably the
first half dozen pages have been utterly destroyed, and the next half
dozen are so mashed, tattered, and defaced, that only a few sentences
here and there are legible.
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