blood and stones, then destroyed the gigantic frog. The frog, a cold-blooded, moist reptile, was always the emblem of water and cold; it represented the great icefields that squatted, frog-like, on the face of the earth. It had "swallowed all the waters," says the Iroquois legend; that is, "the waters were congealed in it; and when it was killed great and destructive torrents broke forth and devastated the land, and Manibozho, the White One, the beneficent Sun, guided these waters into smooth streams and lakes." The Aztecs adored the goddess of water under the figure of a great green frog carved from a single emerald.*

In the Omaha we have the fable of “How the Rabbit killed the Winter," told in the Indian manner. The Rabbit was probably a reminiscence of the Great Hare, Manabozho; and he, probably, as we shall see, a recollection of a great race, whose totem was the Hare.

I condense the Indian story:

"The Rabbit in the past time moving came where the Winter was. The Winter said: “You have not been here lately; sit down.' The Rabbit said he came because his grandmother had altogether beaten the life out of him" (the fallen débris ?). "The Winter went hunting. It was very cold: there was a snow-storm. The Rabbit scared up a deer. 'Shoot him,' said the Rabbit. 'No; I do not hunt such things as that,' said the Winter. They came upon some men. That was the Winter's game. He killed the men and boiled them for supper," (cave-cannibalism). "The Rabbit refused to eat the human flesh. The Winter went hunting again. The Rabbit found out from the Winter's wife that the thing the Winter dreaded most of all the world was the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep. The Rabbit procured one. It was dark. He threw it suddenly at the Winter, saying, 'Uncle, that round thing by you is the head of a Rocky Mountain

*Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 185.

sheep.' The Winter became altogether dead. Only the woman remained. Therefore from that time it has not been very cold."

Of course, any attempt to interpret such a crude myth must be guess-work. It shows, however, that the Indians believed that there was a time when the winter was much more severe than it is now; it was very cold and dark. Associated with it is the destruction of men and cannibalism. At last the Rabbit brings a round object, (the Sun ?), the head of a Rocky Mountain sheep, and the Winter looks on it, and perishes.

Even tropical Peru has its legend of the Age of Ice. Garcilaso de la Vega, a descendant of the Incas, has preserved an ancient indigenous poem of his nation, which seems to allude to a great event, the breaking to fragments of some large object, associated with ice and snow. Dr. Brinton translates it from the Quichua, as follows:

"Beauteous princess,
Lo, thy brother
Breaks thy vessel
Now in fragments.
From the blow come
Thunder, lightning,
Strokes of lightning,
And thou, princess,
Tak'st the water,
With it raineth,
And the hail, or
Snow dispenseth.
Viracocha,

World-constructor,
World-enlivener,

To this office

Thee appointed,
Thee created." *

ii Myths of the New World," p. 167.

But it may be asked, How in such a period of terror and calamity-as we must conceive the comet to have caused-would men think of finding refuge in caves?

The answer is plain: either they or their ancestors had lived in caves.

Caves were the first shelters of uncivilized men. It was not necessary to fly to the caves through the rain of falling debris; many were doubtless already in them when the great world-storm broke, and others naturally sought their usual dwelling-places.

"The cavern," says Brinton, "dimly lingered in the memories of nations."*

Man is born of the earth; he is made of the clay; like Adam, created

"Of good red clay,

Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep
Of the black eagle's wing."

The cave-temples of India-the oldest temples, probably, on earth-are a reminiscence of this cave-life.

We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters "dwelt in a cave"; and we shall find Job hidden away in the "narrow-mouthed bottomless" pit or cave.

*"Myths of the New World," p. 244.

CHAPTER VIII.

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF DARKNESS.

ALL the cosmogonies begin with an Age of Darkness; a damp, cold, rainy, dismal time.

Hesiod tells us, speaking of the beginning of things:

"In truth, then, foremost sprang Chaos. ... But from Chaos were born Erebus and black Night; and from Night again sprang forth Æther and Day, whom she bare after having conceived by union with Erebus." Aristophanes, in his "Aves," says: *

"Chaos and Night and black Erebus and wide Tartarus first existed." |

Orpheus says:

"From the beginning the gloomy night enveloped and obscured all things that were under the ether" (the clouds). "The earth was invisible on account of the darkness, but the light broke through the ether" (the clouds), "and illuminated the earth."

By this power were produced the sun, moon, and

stars.

It is from Sanchoniathon that we derive most of the little we know of that ancient and mysterious people, the Phoenicians. He lived before the Trojan war; and of his writings but fragments survive-quotations in the writings of others.

*"The Theogony."

Faber's "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," vol. i, p. 255. Cory's "Fragments," p. 298.

He tells us that

"The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus.

"Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus," (mud,) "but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.

And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters."

Was this "thick air" the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward became the mud? Is this the meaning of the "turbid chaos"?

We turn to the Babylonian legends. Berosus wrote from records preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon. He says:

"There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle."

Were these "hideous beings" the comets?

From the "Laws of Menu," of the Hindoos, we learn that the universe existed at first in darkness.

We copy the following text from the Vedas:

"The Supreme Being alone existed; afterward there was universal darkness; next the watery ocean was produced by the diffusion of virtue."

We turn to the legends of the Chinese, and we find the same story :

Their annals begin with "Pwan-ku, or the Reign of Chaos."*

"The Ancient Dynasties of Berosus and China," Rev. T. P. Crawford, D. D., p. 4.