The pun upon
the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the
Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind
would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish
main[22]. As it was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;--
Of the character 8 there are 33.
; " 26.
4 " 19.
‡) " 16.
* " 13.
5 " 12.
6 " 11.
†1 " 8.
0 " 6.
92 " 5.
:3 " 4.
? " 3.
¶ " 2.
--.
Pages:
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177