In fact, having once established connected and legible
      characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of
      developing their import. “In the present case—indeed in all cases of secret writing—the
      first question regards the language of the cipher; for the
      principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple
      ciphers are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius
      of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but
      experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to
      him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty was removed by
      the signature. 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. As it was, I
      assumed 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 should 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 division,
      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. 9 2        “      5.
                        : 3        “      4.
                          ? “      3. ¶        “      2. -. “      1. “Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e.
      Afterwards, succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l
      m w b k p q x z_. _E_ predominates so remarkably that an
      individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is
      not the prevailing character. “Here, then, we leave, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
      something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be
      made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we
      shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant
      character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the
      natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if
      the 8 be seen often in couples—for _e_ is doubled with great
      frequency in English—in such words, for example, as ‘meet,’
      ‘.fleet,’ ‘speed,’ ‘seen,’ been,’ ‘agree,’ &c. In the present
      instance we see it doubled no less than five times, although the
      cryptograph is brief. “Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now, of all _words_ in the
      language, ‘the’ is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether
      there are not repetitions of any three characters, in the same
      order of collocation, the last of them being 8. If we discover
      repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably
      represent the word ‘the.’ Upon inspection, we find no less than
      seven such arrangements, the characters being ;48. We may,
      therefore, assume that ; represents _t_, 4 represents _h_, and 8
      represents _e_—the last being now well confirmed. Thus a great
      step has been taken. “But, having established a single word, we are enabled to
      establish a vastly important point; that is to say, several
      commencements and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for
      example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination
      ;48 occurs—not far from the end of the cipher. We know that the ;
      immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the
      six characters succeeding this ‘the,’ we are cognizant of no less
      than five. Let us set these characters down, thus, by the letters
      we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown—

      t eeth. “Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the ‘th,’ as forming no
      portion of the word commencing with the first t; since, by
      experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the
      vacancy, we perceive that no word can be formed of which this
      _th_ can be a part. We are thus narrowed into

      t ee,

      and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we
      arrive at the word ‘tree,’ as the sole possible reading. We thus
      gain another letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words ‘the
      tree’ in juxtaposition. “Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see
      the combination ;48, and employ it by way of termination to what
      immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:

      the tree ;4(‡?34 the,

      or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus:

      the tree thr‡?3h the. “Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank
      spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus:

      the tree thr...h the,

      when the word ‘_through_’ makes itself evident at once. But this
      discovery gives us three new letters, _o_, _u_ and _g_,
      represented by ‡, ? and 3. “Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of
      known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
      arrangement,

      83(88, or egree,

      which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word ‘degree,’ and gives
      us another letter, _d_, represented by †. “Four letters beyond the word ‘degree,’ we perceive the
      combination

      ;46(;88. “Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown
      by dots, as before, we read thus:

      th.rtee,

      an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word ‘thirteen,’ and
      again furnishing us with two new characters, _i_ and _n_,
      represented by 6 and *. “Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
      combination,

      53‡‡†. “Translating as before, we obtain

      good,

      which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first
      two words are ‘A good.’

      “It is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in
      a tabular form, to avoid confusion. It will stand thus:

                5 represents      a
                †       “         d
                8       “         e
                3       “         g
                4       “         h
                6       “         i
                *       “         n
                ‡       “         o
                (       “         r
                ;       “         t
                ?