The Creation of Man | The Fall of Man | The Mark of Cain
The Great Flood - Intro | The Great Flood - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
The Tower of Babel

Folk-Lore in the Old Testament:

Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend And Law

Sir James George Frazer

Chapter 4 - The Great Flood Part 3

Other European Stories of a Great Flood

Apart from the ancient Greek stories of a great flood, it is remarkable that very few popular traditions of a universal or widespread deluge have been recorded in Europe. An Icelandic version of the tradition occurs in the Younger Edda, the great collection of ancient Norse myths and legends which was put together by Snorri Sturluson about A.D We there read how the god Bor had three divine sons, Odin, Wili, and We, and how these sons slew the giant Ymir. From the wounds of the dying giant there gushed such a stream of blood that it drowned all the other giants except one, named Bergelmir, who escaped with his wife in a boat, and from whom the later race of giants is descended Afterwards the sons of Bor took the carcase of the giant Ymir and fashioned the world out of it, for down to that time the world, as we see it now, did not exist.

Out of his flowing blood they made the ocean, the seas, and all waters ; out of his flesh the earth; out of his bones the mountains ; out of his teeth and broken bones the rocks and stones ; and out of his skull the vault of the sky, which they set up on four horns, with a dwarf under each horn to prop it up However, this Norse tale differs from the Babylonian, the Hebrew, and the Greek in dating the great flood before the creation of the world and of mankind ; it hardly therefore belongs to the same class of legends In it the formation of the world out of the body and blood of a giant has been compared to the Babylonian cosmogony recorded by Berosus, according to which the god Bel made the world by splitting a giantess in two and converting one half of her into the earth and the other half of her into the sky, after which he cut off his own head, and from the flowing blood mingled with earth the other gods moulded the human race.

The resemblance between the two cosmogonies is fairly close, but whether, as some think, this proves a direct Babylonian influence on the Norse legend may be doubted.

A Welsh legend of a deluge runs thus. Once upon a time the lake of Llion burst and flooded all lands, so that the whole human race was drowned, all except Dwyfan and Dwyfach, who escaped in a naked or mastless ship and re-peopled the island of Prydain (Britain). The ship also contained a male and a female of every sort of living creature, so that after the deluge the animals were able to propagate their various kinds and restock the world.

A Lithuanian story of a great flood is also reported. One day it chanced that the supreme god Pramzimas was looking out of a window of his heavenly house, and surveying the world from this coign of vantage he could see nothing but war and injustice among mankind. The sight so vexed his righteous soul that he sent two giants, Wandu and Wejas, down to the sinful earth to destroy it. Now the two giants were no other than Water and Wind, and they laid about them with such hearty good will, that after twenty nights and twenty days there was very little of the world left standing.

The deity now looked out of the window again to see how things were progressing, and, as good luck would have it, he was eating nuts at the time. As he did so, he threw down the shells, and one of them happened to fall on the top of the highest mountain, where animals and a few pairs of human beings had sought refuge from the flood. The nutshell came, in the truest sense of the word, as a godsend; everybody clambered into it, and floated about on the surface of the far-spreading inundation. At this critical juncture the deity looked out of the window for the third time, and, his wrath being now abated, he gave orders for the wind to fall and the water to subside. So the remnant of mankind were saved, and they dispersed over the earth. Only a single couple remained on the spot, and from them the Lithuanians are descended. But they were old and naturally a good deal put out by their recent experience ; so to comfort them God sent the rainbow, which advised them to jump over the bones of the earth nine times. The aged couple did as they were bid ; nine times they jumped, and nine other couples sprang up in consequence, the ancestors of the nine Lithuanian tribes

The gipsies of Transylvania are reported to tell the following legend of a deluge There was a time, they say, when men lived for ever, and knew neither trouble nor cold, neither sickness nor sorrow The earth brought forth the finest fruits : flesh grew on many trees, and milk and wine flowed in many rivers Men and animals lived happily with each other, and they had no fear of death.

But one day it happened that an old man came into the country and begged a cottager to give him a night's lodging He slept in the cottage and was well entertained by the cottager's wife. Next day, on taking his leave, the old man gave his host a small fish in a little vessel, and said, "Keep this fish and do not eat it. In nine days I will return, and if you give me the fish back, I will reward you." Then away he went. The housewife looked at the little fish and said to her husband, "Goodman, how would it be if we roasted the fish?" Her husband answered, "I promised the old man to give him back the fish. You must swear to me to spare the fish and to keep it till the old man returns." The wife swore, saying, "I will not kill the fish, I will keep it, so help me God!"

After two days the woman thought, "The little fish must taste uncommonly well, since the old man sets such store on it, and will not let it be roasted, but carries it with him about the world." She thought about it a long time, till at last she took the little fish out of the vessel, and threw it on the hot coals. Hardly had she done so than the first flash of lightning came down from heaven and struck the woman dead. Then it began to rain. The rivers overflowed their beds and swamped the country. On the ninth day the old man appeared to his host and said, "Thou hast kept thine oath and not killed the fish. Take thee a wife, gather thy kinsfolk together, and build thee a boat in which ye can save yourselves. All men and all living things must be drowned, but ye shall be saved. Take with thee also animals and seeds of trees and herbs, that ye may afterwards people the earth again." Then the old man disappeared, and the man did as he was bidden It rained for a whole year, and nothing was to be seen but water and sky.

After a year the water sank, and the man, with his wife and kinsfolk, and the animals, disembarked They had now to work, tilling and sowing the earth, to gain a living. Their life was now labour and sorrow, and worse than all came sickness and death. So they multiplied but slowly, and many, many thousands of years passed before mankind was as numerous as they had been before the flood, and as they are now The incident of the fish in this story reminds us of the fish which figures prominently in the ancient Indian legend of a great flood; and accordingly it seems possible that, as Dr. H. von Wlislocki believes, the ancestors of the gipsies brought the legend with them to Transylvania from their old home in India.

A story of a great flood has also been recorded among the Voguls, a people of the Finnish or Ugrian stock, who inhabit the country both on the east and the west of the Ural Mountains, and who therefore belong both to Asia and Europe. The story runs thus After seven years of drought the Great Woman said to the Great Man, "It has rained elsewhere. How shall we save ourselves? The other giants are gathered in a village to take counsel What shall we do?" The Great Man answered, "Let us cut a poplar in two, hollow it out, and make two boats.

Then we shall weave a rope of willow roots five hundred fathoms long. We shall bury one end of it in the earth and fasten the other to the bow of our boats Let every man with children embark in the boat with his family, and let them be covered in with a tarpaulin of cowhide, let victuals be made ready for seven days and seven nights and put under the tarpaulin. And let us place pots of melted butter in each boat." Having thus provided for their own safety, the two giants ran about the villages, urging the inhabitants to build boats and weave ropes Some did not know how to set about it, and the giants showed them how it should be done.

Others preferred to seek a place of refuge, but they sought in vain, and the Great Man, to whom they betook themselves because he was their elder, told them that he knew no place of refuge large enough to hold them "See," said he, "the holy water will soon be on us ; for two days we have heard the rumble of its waves. Let us embark without delay." The earth was soon submerged, and the people who had not built boats perished in the hot water. The same fate befell the owners of boats whose ropes were too short, and likewise those who had not provided themselves with liquid butter wherewith to grease the rope as it ran out over the gunwale. On the seventh day the water began to sink, and soon the survivors, set foot on dry ground. But there were neither trees nor plants on the face of the earth ; the animals had perished ; even the fish had disappeared. The survivors were on the point of dying of hunger, when they prayed to the great god Numi-târom to create anew fish, animals, trees, and plants, and their prayer was heard.

Some curious relics of the great flood are still pointed out in Savoy. Here and there a huge iron or bronze ring may be seen fixed into a steep rock in some apparently inaccessible position. Tradition runs that when the water of the deluge had covered all the low-lying parts of Savoy, such persons as were lucky enough to own boats fastened them to these rings, which afforded them a temporary security. There are three of these rings in the Mont de Salève, which overlooks Julien in the Haute-Savoie, and there is another in the mountains of Voirons. Again, in the Passo del Cavollo there is a well-known stone bearing great hoof-marks. These, the peasants say, were made by a horse, for which Noah could find no room in the ark. When the flood rose, the animal leaped on to this rock, which was the highest he could see; and as fast as the drowning people tried to clamber up it, the horse beat them off, till the water overwhelmed him also

Persian Stories of a Great Flood

Some scholars have held that in ancient Persian literature they can detect the elements of diluvial traditions. Thus in the Bundahis, a Pahlavi work on cosmogony, mythology, and legendary history, we read of a conflict which the angel Tistar, an embodiment of the bright star Sirius, waged with the Evil Spirit apparently in the early ages of the world. When the sun was in the sign of Cancer, the angel converted himself successively into the forms of a man, a horse, and a bull, and in each form he produced rain for ten days and nights, every drop of the rain being as big as a bowl; so that at the end of the thirty days the water stood at the height of a man all over the world, and all noxious creatures, the breed of the Evil Spirit, were drowned in the caves and dens of the earth. It is the venom of these noxious creatures, diffused in the water, which has made the sea salt to this day But this story has all the appearance of being a cosmogonic myth devised to explain why the sea is salt; it is certainly not a diluvial tradition of the ordinary type, since nothing is said in it about mankind ; indeed we are not even given to understand that the human race had come into existence at the time when the angelic battle with the principle of evil took place.

Another ancient Persian story recorded in the Zend-Avesta, has sometimes been adduced as a diluvial tradition. We read that Yima was the first mortal with whom the Creator Ahura Mazda deigned to converse, and to whom the august deity revealed his law. For nine hundred winters the sage Yima, under the divine superintendence, reigned over the world, and during all that time there was neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death ; the earth was replenished with flocks and herds, with men and dogs and birds, and with red blazing fires. But as there was neither disease nor death mankind and animals increased at such an alarming rate that on two occasions, at intervals of three hundred years, it became absolutely necessary to enlarge the earth in order to find room for the surplus population.

The necessary enlargement was successfully carried out by Yima with the help of two instruments, a golden ring and a gold-inlaid dagger, which he had received as insignia of royalty at the hands of the Creator. However, after the third enlargement it would seem that either the available space of the universe or the patience of the Creator was exhausted ; for he called a council of the celestial gods, and as a result of their mature deliberations he informed Yima that "upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvi deep on the highest tops of mountains. And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables."

Accordingly the Creator warned Yima to provide for himself a place of refuge in which he could find safety from the threatened calamity. He was told to make a square enclosure (Vara), as long as a riding-ground on every side, and to convey into it the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires. "There thou shalt establish dwelling places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery. Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth ; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth.

Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth ; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the enclosure (Vara). There shall be no humpbacked, none bulged forward there ; no impotent, no lunatic ; no Poverty, no lying ; no meanness, no jealousy ; no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainyu stamps the bodies of mortals." Yima obeyed the divine command, and made the enclosure, and gathered into it the seeds of men and animals, of trees and fruits, the choicest and the best. On that blissful abode the sun, moon, and stars rose only once a year, but on the other hand a whole year seemed only as one day. Every fortieth year to every human couple were born two children, a male and a female, and so it was also with every sort of cattle. And the men in Yima's enclosure lived the happiest life.

In all this it is hard to see any vestige of a flood story. The destruction with which the animals are threatened is to be the effect of severe winters and deep snow, not of a deluge ; and nothing is said about repeopling the world after the catastrophe by means of the men and animals who had been preserved in the enclosure. It is" true that the warning given by the Creator to Yima, and the directions to bestow himself and a certain number of animals in a place of safety, resemble the warning given by God to Noah and the directions about the building and use of the ark. But in the absence of any reference to a deluge we are not justified in classing this old Persian story with diluvial traditions.

Ancient Indian Stories of a Great Flood

No legend of a great flood is to be found in the Vedic hymns, the most ancient literary monuments of India, which appear to have been composed at various dates between 00 and 000 B.C., while the Aryans were still settled in the Punjab and had not yet spread eastward into the valley of the Ganges. But in the later Sanscrit literature a well-marked story of a deluge repeatedly occurs in forms which combine a general resemblance with some variations of detail. The first record of it meets us in the Satapatha Brahmana, an important prose treatise on sacred ritual, which is believed to have been written not long before the rise of Buddhism, and therefore not later than the sixth century before Christ. The Aryans then occupied the upper valley of the Ganges as well as the valley of the Indus ; but they were probably as yet little affected by the ancient civilizations of Western Asia and Greece. Certainly the great influx of Greek ideas and Greek art came centuries later with Alexander's invasion in 6 B.C As related in the Satapatha Brahmana the story of the great flood runs as follows :—

"In the morning they brought to Manu water for washing, just as now also they are wont to bring water for washing the hands. When he was washing himself, a fish came into his hands. It spake to him the word, ' Rear me, I will save thee!' 'Wherefrom wilt thou save me ? ' 'A flood will carry away all these creatures: from that I will save thee !' 'How am I to rear thee ?' It said, 'As long as we are small, there is great destruction for us : fish devours fish. Thou wilt first keep me in a jar. When I outgrow that, thou wilt dig a pit and keep me in it. When I outgrow that, thou wilt take me down to the sea, for then I shall be beyond destruction.' It soon became a ghasha (a large fish) ; for that grows largest of all fish. Thereupon it said, ' In such and such a year that flood will come. Thou shalt then attend to me by preparing a ship ; and when the flood has risen thou shalt enter into the ship, and I will save thee from it.' After he had reared it in this way, he took it down to the sea. And in the same year which the fish had indicated to him, he attended to the advice of the fish by preparing a ship ; and when the flood had risen, he entered into the ship. The fish then swam up to him, and to its horn he tied the rope of the ship, and by that means he passed swiftly up to yonder northern mountain. It then said, ' I have saved thee. Fasten the ship to a tree ; but let not the water cut thee off, whilst thou art on the mountain. As the water subsides, thou mayest gradually descend!' Accordingly he gradually descended, and hence that slope of the northern mountain is called ' Manu's descent.' The flood then swept away all these creatures, and Manu alone remained here.

"Being desirous of offspring, he engaged in worshipping and austerities. During this time he also performed a pâka-sacrifice : he offered up in the waters clarified butter, sour milk, whey, and curds. Thence a woman was produced in a year: becoming quite solid she rose; clarified butter gathered in her footprint. Mitra and Varuna met her. They said to her, ' Who art thou ? ' ' Manu's daughter,' she replied. ' Say thou art ours,' they said. 'No,' she said,'I am the daughter of him who begat me.' They desired to have a share in her. She either agreed or did not agree, but passed by them. She came to Manu. Manu said to her, ' Who art thou?' 'Thy daughter,' she replied. ' How, illustrious one, art thou my daughter?' he asked. She replied, ' Those offerings of clarified butter, sour milk, whey, and curds, which thou madest in the waters, with them thou hast begotten me. I am the blessing : make use of me at the sacrifice! If thou wilt make use of me at the sacrifice, thou wilt become rich in offspring and cattle. Whatever blessing thou shalt invoke through me, all that shall be granted to thee !' He accordingly made use of her as the benediction in the middle of the sacrifice ; for what is intermediate between the fore-offerings and the after-offerings, is the middle of the sacrifice. With her he went on worshipping and performing austerities, wishing for offspring. Through her he generated this race, which is this race of Manu ; and whatever blessing he invoked through her, all that was granted to him."

The next record of the flood legend in Sanscrit literature meets us in the Mahabharata, the vast Indian epic, which, in the form in which we now possess it, is about eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together. The nucleus of this huge compilation may date from the fifth century before Christ ; through successive expansions it attained its present enormous bulk in the early centuries of our era. The evidence of inscriptions proves that by the year 00 A.D. the poem was complete As told in the epic, the legend runs thus :—

"There was a great sage [rishi] Manu, son of Vivasvat, majestic, in lustre equal to Prajâpati. In energy, fiery vigour, prosperity, and austere fervour he surpassed both his father and his grandfather. Standing with uplifted arm, on one foot, on the spacious Badari, he practised intense austere fervour. This direful exercise he performed, with his head downwards, and with unwinking eyes, for ten thousand years. Once, when, clad in dripping rags, with matted hair, he was so engaged, a fish came to him on the banks of the Chîrinî, and spake: 'Lord, I am a small fish ; I dread the stronger ones, and from them you must save me. For the stronger fish devour the weaker ; this has been immemorially ordained as our means of subsistence. Deliver me from this flood of apprehension in which I am sinking, and I will requite the deed.' Hearing this, Manu, filled with compassion, took the fish in his hand, and bringing him to the water threw him into a jar bright as a moonbeam. In it the fish, being excellently tended, grew ; for Manu treated him like a son. After a long time he became very large, and could not be contained in the jar.

Then, seeing Manu, he said again : 'In order that I may thrive, remove me elsewhere.' Manu then took him out of the jar, brought him to a large pond, and threw him in. There he continued to grow for very many years. Although the pond was two yojanas long, and one yojana broad, the lotus-eyed fish found in it no room to move; and again said to Manu : ' Take me to Ganga, the dear queen of the ocean-monarch ; in her I shall dwell ; or do as thou thinkest best, for I must contentedly submit to thy authority, as through thee I have exceedingly increased.' Manu accordingly took the fish and threw him into the river Ganga. There he waxed for some time, when he again said to Manu : 'From my great bulk I cannot move in the Ganga ; be gracious and remove me quickly to the ocean.' Manu took him out of the Ganga ; and cast him into the sea. Although so huge, the fish was easily borne, and pleasant to touch and smell, as Manu carried him. When he had been thrown into the ocean he said to Manu : ' Great lord, thou hast in every way preserved me : now hear from me what thou must do when the time arrives. Soon shall all these terrestrial objects, both fixed and moving, be dissolved. The time for the purification of the worlds has now arrived. I therefore inform thee what is for thy greatest good.

The period dreadful for the universe, moving and fixed, has come. Make for thyself a strong ship, with a cable attached ; embark in it with the seven sages [rishis], and stow in it, carefully preserved and assorted, all the seeds which have been described of old by Brahmanas. When embarked in the ship, look out for me : I shall come recognizable by my horn. So shalt thou do ; I greet thee and depart. These great waters cannot be crossed over without me. Distrust not my word.' Manu replied, ' I shall do as thou hast said.' After taking mutual leave they departed each on his own way. Manu then, as enjoined, taking with him the seeds, floated on the billowy ocean in the beautiful ship. He then thought on the fish, which, knowing his desire, arrived with all speed, distinguished by a horn. When Manu saw the horned leviathan, lofty as a mountain, he fastened the ship's cable to the horn. Being thus attached, the fish dragged the ship with great rapidity, transporting it across the briny ocean which seemed to dance with its waves and thunder with its waters. Tossed by the tempests, the ship whirled like a reeling and intoxicated woman. Neither the earth, nor the quarters of the world appeared ; there was nothing but water, air, and sky. In the world thus confounded, the seven sages [rishis], Manu, and the fish were beheld.

So, for very many years, the fish, unwearied, drew the ship over the waters ; and brought it at length to the highest peak of Himavat. He then, smiling gently, said to the sages, ' Bind the ship without delay to this peak.' They did so accordingly. And that highest peak of Himavat is still known by the name of Naubandhana (' the Binding of the Ship'). The friendly fish (or god, animisha) then said to the sages, ' I am the Prajapati Brahma, than whom nothing higher can be reached. In the form of a fish I have delivered you from this great danger. Manu shall create all living beings, gods, demigods [asuras] men, with all worlds, and all things moving and fixed. By my favour and through severe austere fervour, he shall attain perfect insight into his creative work, and shall not become bewildered.' Having thus spoken, the fish in an instant disappeared. Manu, desirous to call creatures into existence and bewildered in his work, performed a great act of austere fervour ; and then began visibly to create all living beings. This which I have narrated is known as the Matsyaka Purana (or 'Legend of the Fish')."

In this latter version Manu is not a common man but a great seer, who by his religious austerities and the favour of the Supreme Being is promoted to the dignity of Creator of the world and of all living things, including gods and men.

The same legend is repeated, with minor variations, in the later class of Sanscrit books known as the Puranas. These are epic works, didactic in character and sectarian in Purpose, generally designed to recommend the worship of Vishnu, though some of them inculcate the religion of Siva. So far as they deal with the legends of ancient days, they derive their materials mainly from the Mahabharata. The Vayu Purana, which may be the oldest of them, is believed to date from about 0 A.D In the Matsyu ("Fish") Purana the legend of the deluge runs thus :—

"Formerly a heroic king called Manu, the patient son of the Sun, endowed with all good qualities, indifferent to pain and pleasure, after investing his son with royal authority, practised intense austere fervour, in a. certain region of Malaya (Malabar), and attained to transcendent union with the Deity (yoga). When a million years had elapsed, Brahma became pleased and disposed to bestow a boon, which he desired Manu to choose. Bowing before the father of the world the monarch said, ' I desire of thee this one incomparable boon, that when the dissolution of the universe arrives I may have the power to preserve all existing things, whether moving or stationary.' 'So be it,' said the Soul of all things, and vanished on the spot ; when a great shower of flowers, thrown down by the gods, fell from the sky. Once as, in his hermitage, Manu offered the oblation to the Manes, there fell upon his hands, along with some water, a S'aphari fish (a carp), which the kind-hearted king perceiving, strove to preserve in his water-jar. In one day and night the fish grew to the size of sixteen fingers, and cried, ' Preserve me, preserve me.' Manu then took and threw him into a large pitcher, where in one night he increased three cubits, and again cried, with the voice of one distressed, to the son of Vivasvat, ' Preserve me, preserve me, I have sought refuge with thee.' Manu next put him into a well, and when he could not be contained even in that, he was thrown into a lake, where he attained to the size of a yojana; but still cried in humble tones, ' Preserve me, preserve me.' When, after being flung into the Ganga, he increased there also, the king threw him into the ocean. When he filled the entire ocean, Manu said, in terror, ' Thou art some god, or thou art Vasudeva; how can any one else be like this ? Whose body could equal two hundred thousand yojanas'?

Thou art recognised under this form of a fish, and thou tormentest me, Kesava ; reverence be to thee, Hrishlkesa, lord of the world, abode of the universe!' Thus addressed, the divine Janardana, in the form of a fish, replied : ' Thou hast well spoken, and hast rightly known me.

In a short time the earth with its mountains, groves, and forests, shall be submerged in the waters. This ship has been constructed by the company of all the gods for the preservation of the vast host of living creatures Embarking in it all living creatures, both those engendered from moisture and from eggs, as well as the viviparous, and plants, preserve them from calamity. When driven by the blasts at the end of the yuga? the ship is swept along, thou shalt bind it to this horn of mine. Then at the close of the dissolution thou shalt be the Prajapati (lord of creatures) of this world, fixed and moving When this shall have been done, thou, the omniscient, patient sage [rishi], and lord of the Manvantara" shalt be an object of worship to the gods.' nd Adhyaya : Suta said : Being thus addressed, Manu asked the slayer of the Asura, ' In how many years shall the (existing) Man-vantara come to an end? And how shall I preserve the living creatures? or how shall I meet again with thee?' The fish answered: 'From this day forward a drought shall visit the earth for a hundred years and more, with a tormenting famine Then the seven direful rays of the sun, of little power, destructive, shall rain burning charcoal At the close of the yuga the submarine fire shall burst forth, while the poisonous flame issuing from the mouth of Sankarshana (shall blaze) from Patala, and the fire from Mahadeva's third eye shall issue from his forehead.

Thus kindled the world shall become confounded When, consumed in this manner, the earth shall become like ashes, the aether too shall be scorched with heat Then the world, together with the gods and planets, shall be destroyed The seven clouds of the period of dissolution, called Samvartta, Bhimanada, Drona, Chanda, Balahaka, Vidyutpataka, and Sonambu, produced from the steam of the fire, shall inundate the earth. The seas agitated, and joined together, shall reduce these entire three worlds to one ocean. Taking this celestial ship, embarking on it all the seeds, and through contemplation fixed on me fastening it by a rope to my horn, thou alone shalt remain, protected by my power, when even the gods are burnt up. The sun and moon, I Brahma with the four worlds, the holy river Narmada [Nerbudda], the great sage Markandeya, Mahadeva, the Vedas, the Purana, with the sciences,—these shall remain with thee at the close of the Manvantara. The world having thus become one ocean at the end of the Chakshusha manvantara, I shall give currency to the Vedas at the commencement of thy creation.' Suta continued : Having thus spoken, the divine Being vanished on the spot; while Manu fell into a state of contemplation (yoga) induced by the favour of Vasudeva. When the time announced by Vasudeva had arrived, the predicted deluge took place in that very manner. Then Janardana appeared in the form of a horned fish; (the serpent) Ananta came to Manu in the shape of a rope.

Then he who was skilled in duty (i.e. Manu) drew towards himself all creatures by contemplation (yoga) and stowed them in the ship, which he then attached to the fish's horn by the serpent-rope, as he stood upon the ship, and after he had made obeisance to Janardana. I shall now declare the Purana which, in answer to an enquiry from Manu, was uttered by the deity in the form of the fish, as he lay in a sleep of contemplation till the end of the universal inundation: Listen." The Matsya Purana says nothing more about the progress and results of the deluge.

Another ancient Indian work of the same class, the Bhagavata Purana, gives the same story with variations as follows :—

"At the close of the past Kalpa there occurred an occasional dissolution of the universe arising from Brahma's nocturnal repose ; in which the Bhurloka and other worlds were submerged in the ocean.

When the creator, desirous of rest, had under the influence of time been overcome by sleep, the strong Hayagriva coming near, carried off the Vedas which had issued from his mouth Discovering this deed of the prince of the Danavas, the divine Hari, the Lord, took the form of a S'apharl fish. At that time a certain great royal sage [rishi], called Satyavrata, who was devoted to Narayana, practised austere fervour, subsisting on water. He was the same who in the present great Kalpa is the son of Visvasvat, called S'raddhadeva, and was appointed by Hari to the office of Manu Once, as in the river Kritamala he was offering the oblation of water to the Pitris [ancestral spirits], a S'aphari fish came into the water in the hollow of his hands. The lord of Dravida, Satyavrata, cast the fish in his hands with the water into the river The fish very piteously cried to the merciful king, 'Why dost thou abandon me poor and terrified to the monsters who destroy their kindred in this river ? ' [Satyavrata then took the fish from the river, placed it in his waterpot, and as it grew larger and larger, threw it successively into a larger vessel, a pond, various lakes, and at length into the sea.

The fish objects to be left there on the plea that it would be devoured ; but Manu replies that it can be no real fish, but Vishnu himself; and with various expressions of devotion enquires why he had assumed this disguise.] The god replies : 'On the seventh day after this the three worlds Bhurloka, etc., shall sink beneath the ocean of the dissolution. When the universe is dissolved in that ocean, a large ship, sent by me, shall come to thee. Taking with thee the plants and various seeds, surrounded by the seven sages [rishis] and attended by all existences, thou shalt embark on the great ship, and shalt without alarm move over the one dark ocean, by the sole light of the sages [rishis] When the ship shall be vehemently shaken by the tempestuous wind, fasten it by the great serpent to my horn—for I shall come near So long as the night of Brahma lasts, I shall draw thee with the sages [rishis] and the ship over the ocean.' [The god then disappears after promising that Satyavrata shall practically know his greatness and experience his kindness, and Satyavrata awaits the predicted events.]

Then the sea, augmenting as the great clouds poured down their waters, was seen overflowing its shores and everywhere inundating the earth. Meditating on the injunctions of the deity, Satyavrata beheld the arrival of the ship, on which he embarked with the Brahmans, taking along with him the various kinds of plants. Delighted, the Munis said to him, ' Meditate on Kesava ; he will deliver us from this danger, and grant us prosperity.' Accordingly when the king had meditated on him, there appeared on the ocean a golden fish, with one horn, a million yojanas long. Binding the ship to his horn with the serpent for a rope, as he had been before commanded by Hari, Satyavrata landed Madhusudana. [The hymn follows.] When the king had thus spoken, the divine primeval Male, in the form of a fish, moving on the vast ocean declared to him the truth ; the celestial collection of Puranas, with the Sankhya, Yoga, the ceremonial, and the mystery of the soul. Seated on the ship with the sages [rishis], Satyavrata heard the true doctrine of the soul, of the eternal Brahma, declared by the god. When Brahma arose at the end of the past dissolution, Hari restored to him the Vedas, after slaying Hayagriva. And King Satyavrata, master of all knowledge, sacred and profane, became, by the favour of Vishnu, the son of Vivasvat, the Manu in this Kalpa".

Yet another ancient Indian version of the deluge legend meets us in the Agni Purana: it runs thus:-—

"Vasishtha said : ' Declare to me Vishnu, the cause of the creation, in the form of a Fish and his other incarnations ; and the Puranic revelation of Agni, as it was originally heard from Vishnu.' Agni replied : ' Hear O Vasishtha, I shall relate to thee the Fish-incarnation of Vishnu, and his acts when so incarnate for the destruction of the wicked, and protection of the good. At the close of the past Kalpa there occurred an occasional dissolution of the universe caused by Brahma's sleep, when the Bhurloka and other worlds were inundated by the ocean. Manu, the son of Vivasvat, practised austere fervour for the sake of worldly enjoyment as well as final liberation. Once, when he was offering the libation of water to the Pitris [ancestral spirits] in the river Kritamala, a small fish came into the water in the hollow of his hands, and said to him when he sought to cast it into the stream, ' Do not throw me in, for I am afraid of alligators and other monsters which are here.' On hearing this Manu threw it into a jar. Again, when grown, the Fish said to him, ' Provide me a large place.' Manu then cast it into a larger vessel (?). When it increased there, it said to the king, 'Give me a wide space.' When, after being thrown into a pond, it became as large as its receptacle, and cried out for greater room, he flung it into the sea.

In a moment it became a hundred thousand yojanas in bulk. Beholding the wonderful -Fish, Manu said in astonishment: 'Who art thou ? Art thou Vishnu ? Adoration be paid to thee, O Narayana. Why, O Janardana, dost thou bewilder me by thy illusion?' The Fish, which had become incarnate for the welfare of this world and the destruction of the wicked, when so addressed, replied to Manu, who had been intent upon its preservation : ' Seven days after this the ocean shall inundate the world. A ship shall come to thee, in which thou shalt place the seeds, and accompanied by the sages [rishis] shalt sail during the night of Brahma. Bind it with the great serpent to my horn, when I arrive.' Having thus spoken the Fish vanished. Manu awaited the promised period, and embarked on the ship when the sea overflowed its shores. (There appeared) a golden Fish, a million yojanas long, with one horn, to which Manu attached the ship, and heard from the Fish the Matsya Purana, which takes away sin, together with the Veda. Kesava then slew the Danava Hayagriva who had snatched away the Vedas, and preserved its mantras and other portions."

Modern Indian Stories of a Great Flood

The Bhils, a wild jungle tribe of Central India, relate that once upon a time a pious man (dhobi), who used to wash his clothes in a river, was warned by a fish of the approach of a great deluge. The fish informed him that, out of gratitude for his humanity in always feeding the fish, he had come to give him this warning, and to urge him to prepare a large box in which he might escape The pious man accordingly made ready the box and embarked in it with his sister and a cock After the deluge Rama sent out his messenger to inquire into the state of affairs The messenger heard the crowing of the cock and so discovered the box Thereupon Rama had the box brought before him, and asked the man who he was and how he had escaped The man told his tale Then Rama made him face in turn north, east, and west, and swear that the woman with him was his sister.

The man stuck to it that she was indeed his sister Rama next turned him to the south, whereupon the man contradicted his former statement and said that the woman was his wife. After that, Rama inquired of him who it was that told him to escape, and on learning that it was the fish, he at once caused the fish's tongue to be cut out for his pains ; so that sort of fish has been tongueless ever since.

Having executed this judgment on the fish for blabbing, Rama ordered the man to repeople the devastated world. Accordingly the man married his sister and had by her seven sons and seven daughters. The firstborn received from Rama the present of a horse, but, being unable to ride, he left the animal in the plain and went into the forest to cut wood So he became a woodman, and woodmen his descendants the Bhils have been from that day to this In this Bhil story the warning of the coming flood given by the fish to its human benefactor resembles the corresponding incident in the Sanscrit story of the flood too closely to be independent. It may be questioned whether the Bhils borrowed the story from the Aryan invaders, or whether on the contrary the Aryans may not have learned it from the aborigines whom they encountered in their progress through the country. In favour of the latter view it may be pointed out that the story of the flood does not occur in the most ancient Sanscrit literature, but only appears in books written long after the settlement of the Aryans in India.

The Kamars, a small Dravidian tribe of the Raipur District and adjoining States, in the Central Provinces of India, tell the following story of a great flood. They say that in the beginning God created a man and woman, to whom in their old age two children were born, a boy and a girl. But God sent a deluge over the world in order to drown a jackal which had angered him. The old couple heard of the coming deluge, so they shut up their children in a hollow piece of wood with provision of food to last them till the flood should subside. Then they closed up the trunk, and the deluge came and lasted for twelve years. The old couple and all other living things on earth were drowned, but the trunk floated on the face of the waters. After twelve years God created two birds and sent them to see whether his enemy the jackal had been drowned. The birds flew over all the corners of the world, and they saw nothing but a log of wood floating on the surface of the water. They perched on it, and soon heard low and feeble voices coming from inside the log. It was the children saying to each other that they had only provisions for three days left. So the birds flew away and told God, who then caused the flood to subside, and taking out the children from the log of wood he heard their story. Thereupon he brought them up, and in due time they were married, and God gave the name of a different caste to every child who was born to them, and from them all the inhabitants of the world are descended In this story the incident of the two birds suggests a reminiscence of the raven and the dove in the Biblical legend, which may have reached the Kamars through missionary influence.

The Hos or Larka Kols, an aboriginal race who inhabit Singbhum, in south-western Bengal, say that after the world was first peopled mankind grew incestuous and paid no heed either to God or to their betters. So Sirma Thakoor, or Sing Bonga, the Creator, resolved to destroy them all, and he carried out his intention, some say by water, others say by fire. However, he spared sixteen people, and from them Presumably the present race of mortals is descended A fuller version of this legend is reported to be current among the Mundaris or Mundas, a tribe of Kols akin to the Hos who inhabit the tableland of Chota Nagpur to the north of Singbhum. According to the Mundas, God created mankind out of the dust of the ground. But soon mankind grew wicked ; they would not wash themselves, or work, or do anything but dance and sing perpetually. So it repented Sing Bonga that he had made them, and he resolved to destroy them by a great flood. For that purpose he sent down a stream of fire-water (Sengle-Daa) from heaven, and all men died. Only two, a brother and a sister, were saved by hiding under a tiril tree ; hence the wood of a tiril tree is black and charred with fire to this day.

But God thought better of it, and to stop the fiery rain he created the snake Lurbing, which puffed its soul up into the shape of a rainbow, thereby holding up the showers. So when the Mundaris see a rainbow they say, "It will rain no more. Lurbing has destroyed the rain."

The Santals, another aboriginal race of Bengal, have also a legend that in the early ages of the world almost the whole human race was destroyed by fire from heaven. There are various traditions concerning this great calamity. Some say that it occurred soon after the creation of the first man and woman. Others assign it to a later period, and mention different places as the scene of the catastrophe. Different reasons, too, are alleged for the visitation. Some say it was sent by God as a punishment for the sins of the people; others affirm that two discontented members of the Marndi tribe invoked the vengeance of the Creator Thakur upon those who had offended them. The account which dates the event immediately after the creation makes no reference to the causes which operated to bring it about. It runs as follows. When Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi, the first man and woman, had reached adolescence, it rained fire-rain for seven days and seven nights. They sought refuge from the burning liquid in a cave in a rock, from which, when the flood was over, they came forth unscathed. Jaher-era then came and inquired of them where they had been. They answered, "We were underneath a rock." The following verse, we are told, completes the description :—

"Seven days and seven nights it rained fire-rain, Where were you, ye two human beings: Where did you pass the time?"

The other Santal story, which explains the fire-flood by the discontent of the Marndi tribe, is as follows. When the different social distinctions and duties were assigned to the various tribes, the Marndis were overlooked. Two members of the tribe, by name Ambir Singh and Bir Singh, who dwelt on Mount Here, were incensed at the slight thus put upon their fellows, and they prayed that fire from heaven might descend and destroy the other tribes. Their prayer was answered : one half of the country was destroyed, and one half of the population perished. The house in which Ambir Singh and Bir Singh lived was of stone, with a door of the same material. It therefore resisted the fire which was devastating the country far and wide, and the two inmates escaped unhurt. At this point the reciter of the tale sings the following verses :—

"Thou art shut in with a stone door, Ambir Singh, thou art shut in with a stone door, Ambir Singh, the country is burning, Ambir Singh, the country is burnt up"

When Kisku Raj heard of what had happened, he inquired who had done it. They told him it was the work of Ambir Singh and Bir Singh. He at once ordered them into his presence and asked why they had brought such a disaster upon the people. They answered, "In the distribution of distinctions and offices all were considered but ourselves." To that Kisku Raj replied, "Yes, yes, do not act thus, and you also shall receive an office." Then they caused the fire to be extinguished. So Kisku Raj, addressing them, said, "I appoint you treasurers and stewards over all the property and possessions of all kings, princes, and nobles. All the rice and the unhusked rice will be under your charge. From your hands will all the servants and dependents receive their daily portion." Thus was the fire-flood stayed, and thus did the Marndi tribe attain to its present rank.

Yet a third Santal version of the fire-flood story has it that, while the people were at Khojkaman, their iniquity rose to such a pitch that Thakur Jiu, the Creator, punished them by sending fire-rain upon earth. Out of the whole race two individuals alone escaped destruction by hiding in a cave on Mount Haradata.

The Lepchas of Sikhim have a tradition of a great flood during which a couple escaped to the top of a mountain called Tendong, near Darjeeling Captain Samuel Turner, who went on an embassy from India to the court of the Teshoo Lama at the close of the eighteenth century, reports that according to a native legend Tibet was long ago almost totally inundated, until a deity of the name of Gya, whose chief temple is at Durgeedin, took compassion on the survivors, drew off the waters through Bengal, and sent teachers to civilize the wretched inhabitants, who were destined to repeople the land, and who up to that time had been very little better than monkeys.

The Singphos of Assam relate that once on a time mankind was destroyed by a flood because they omitted to offer the proper sacrifices at the slaughter of buffaloes and pigs. Only two men, Khun litang and Chu liyang, with their wives, were saved, and being appointed by the gods to dwell on Singrabhum hill, they became the progenitors of the present human race. The Lushais of Assam have a legend that the king of the water demons fell in love with a woman named Ngai-ti (Loved One), but she rejected his addresses and ran away ; so he pursued her, and surrounded the whole human race with water on the top of a hill called Phun-lu-buk, which is said to be far away to the north-east. As the water continued to rise, the people took Ngai-ti and threw her into the flood, which thereupon receded. In flowing away, the water hollowed out the deep valleys and left standing the high mountains which we see to this day ; for down to the time of the great flood the earth had been level.

Again, the Anals of Assam say that once upon a time the whole world was flooded. All the people were drowned except one man and one woman, who ran to the highest peak of the Leng hill, where they climbed up a high tree and hid themselves among the branches. The tree grew near a large pond, which was as clear as the eye of a crow. They spent the night perched on the tree, and in the morning, what was their astonishment to find that they had been changed into a tiger and a tigress! Seeing the sad plight of the world, the Creator, whose name is Pathian, sent a man and a woman from a cave on a hill to repeople the drowned world. But on emerging from the cave, the couple were terrified at the sight of the huge tiger and tigress, and they said to the Creator, "O Father, you have sent us to repeople the world, but we do not think that we shall be able to carry out your intention, as the whole world is under water, and the only spot on which we could make a place of rest is occupied by two ferocious beasts, which are waiting to devour us ; give us strength to slay these animals." After that, they killed the tigers, and lived happily, and begat many sons and daughters, and from them the drowned world was repeopled

A long story of a great flood is told by the Ahoms of Assam, a branch of the great Shan race of Indo-China, from which their ancestors crossed over the Patkoi mountains about 8 A.D. to settle in their present abode. The Ahom, or rather Shan, legend runs as follows :—

Long, long ago there were many worlds beneath the sky, but in the world of men, the middle world, there was as yet no race of kings (the Shans). The earth was like a wild mountainous jungle. On a time, bamboos cracked and opened, and from them came forth animals. They lived in deep forests, far from the haunts of men. Thereafter, a king and queen from heaven, Hpi-pok and Hpi-mot, came down to earth and found their way to Möng-hi on the Cambodia River's banks. They were the ancestors of the kingly race of Shans. But a time came when they made no sacrificial offerings to their gods. Therefore the storm-god, Ling-lawn, was angry at their impiety, and he sent down great cranes to eat them up. The cranes came, but could not eat all the people up, because there were so many of them. Then the storm-god sent down great tawny lions, but they too found more Shans than they could devour. Next he sent down great serpents to swallow the whole impious race ; but all the people, from palace to hamlet, from the oldest to the youngest, attacked the serpents with their swords, and killed them.

The storm-god was enraged, he snorted threateningly, and the battle was not over.

The old year passed, and from the first to the third month of the new year, which was the nineteenth of the cycle, there was a great drought. In the fourth month (March, well on in the dry season) the parched earth cracked open in wide seams, and many people died of thirst and famine. But in whatever country they were, there they must stay. There was no water, and they could not pass from one country to another. The water dried up in the deepest ponds and in the broadest rivers ; where elephants had bathed, the people now dug wells for drinking water. What had been their watering-places, where many people had gathered together like swarms of bees in their search for water, now stank with the bodies of the dead.

Then Ling-lawn, the storm-god, called his counsellors— Kaw-hpa and Hseng-kio, old Lao-hki, Tai-long and Bak-long, and Ya-hseng-hpa, the smooth talker, and many others. At his court they gathered together. Entering his palace they bowed down to worship. Over the head of the god was an umbrella, widely spread and beautiful as a flower. They talked together in the language of men (Shan), and they took counsel to destroy the human race. "Let us send for Hkang-hkak," said they. He was the god of streams and of ponds, of crocodiles and of all water animals. Majestically came he in, and the storm-god gave him instructions, saying, "Descend with the clouds. Tarry not. Straightway report to Lip-long the distinguished lord."

Soon thereafter the water-god Hkang-hkak appeared before the sage Lip-long, who had been consulting his chicken bones. The omens were evil. When the sage came down from his house, the sky was dry as an oven. He knew that some great calamity was impending. On meeting the water-god, therefore, the sage was not surprised to hear him say that Ling-lawn, the storm-god, was about to send a flood to overwhelm the earth. The divine messenger declared that the people of every land would be destroyed, that trees would be uprooted and houses submerged or float bottom up on the water. Even great cities would be overwhelmed. None could escape. Every living thing would be drowned. But against the coming of the flood the sage was commanded to make a strong raft, binding it firmly together with ropes. A cow, too, he was to take with him on the raft, and though all things else should be destroyed, yet would he and the cow escape. He might not even warn his loving wife and dear children of the coming destruction.

Musing on the water-god's sad instructions, the sage went homeward with bowed head in deep dejection. He caught up his little son in his arms and wept aloud. He longed to tell his eldest son, but he feared the cruel vengeance of the gods. Too sore at heart to eat, he went down in the morning hungry and bent to the river's bank. There he toiled day by day, gathering the parts of his raft and firmly bind-mg them side by side. Even his own wife and children jeered at his finished but futile task. From house to house the scoffers mocked and railed. "Quit it, thou fool, thou ass," they cried; "if this come to the ear of the governors, they will put thee out of the way; if it come to the ear of the king, he will command thy death." Over the great kingdoms then reigned Hkun Chao and Hkun Chu.

A few days more and the flood came, sweeping on and increasing in violence like the onward rush of a forest fire. Fowls died in their coops. The crying of children was hushed in death. The bellowing of bulls and the trumpeting of elephants ceased as they sank in the water. There was confusion and destruction on every side. All animals were swept away, and the race of men perished. There was no one left in the valleys or on the mountains. The strong raft, bearing the sage Lip-long and the cow, alone floated safe upon the water. Drifting on, he saw the dead bodies of his wife and children. He caught and embraced them, and let them fall back again into the water. As he cast them from him into the deep he wept bitterly; bitterly did he lament that the storm-god had not given him leave to warn them of the impending doom. Thus perished the kingly race (the Shans). Paying their ferry-hire, their spirits passed over to the mansions of heaven. There they heard the reverberations of the celestial drums. They came by tens of thousands, and eating cold crab they were refreshed. When they reached the spirit-world they looked round and said, "Spirit-land is as festive and charming as a city of wine and women."

But now the stench of dead bodies, glistering in the sun, filled the earth. The storm-god Ling-lawn sent down serpents innumerable to devour them, but they could not, so many were the corpses. The angry god would have put the serpents to death, but they escaped by fleeing into a cave. Then he sent down nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand tigers, but even they could make little headway in the consumption of the corpses and retired discomfited. More angry than ever, the god hurled showers of thunderbolts at the retreating tigers, but they too fled into caves, growling so fiercely that the very sky might have fallen. Then the storm-god sent down Hsen-htam and Hpa-hpai, the god of fire. As they descended, riding their horses, they viewed all the country round. Alighting on a mountain they could see but three elevations of land. They sent forth a great conflagration, scattering their fire everywhere. The fire swept over all the earth, and the smoke ascended in clouds to heaven.

When he saw the fire coming, the sage Lip-long snatched up a stick and knocked down the cow at one blow. With his sword he ripped up her belly and crawled in. There he saw seed of the gourd plant, white as leavened bread. The fire swept over the dead cow, roaring as it went. When it was gone, Lip-long came forth, the only living man beneath the sun. He asked the great water-god Hkang-hkak what he should do, and the god bade him plant the seed of the gourd on a level plot of ground. He did so, and one gourd-vine climbed up a mountain and was scorched by the fierce rays of the sun. Another vine ran downward, and, soaked in the water of the flood, it rotted and died. A third vine, springing upwards with clinging tendrils, twined about the bushes and trees. News of its rapid growth reached the ears of Ling-lawn, the storm-god, and he sent down his gardener to care for the vine. The gardener made haste and arrived in the early morning at cock-crow. He dug about and manured the vine. He trailed up its branches with his own hand. When the rainy season came, the vine grew by leaps and bounds. It spread far and wide, coiling itself like a serpent about the shrubs and trees. It blossomed and bore fruit, great gourds such as no man may see again.

Then Ling-lawn, the rain-god, sent down Sao-pang, the god of the clear sky, to prepare the earth for human habitation. From him went forth waves of heat to dry up what remained of the flood. When the earth was dry once more and fit for habitation, the storm-god threw thunderbolts to break the gourds in pieces. A bolt struck and broke open a gourd. The people within the gourd cried out, "What is this? a bolt from a clear sky; let us go forth to till the land." Stooping low, they came forth. Again, another bolt struck another gourd, breaking it open, and the Shans therein said, "What shall we do, lord?" He replied, "You shall come forth to rule many lands." Thus the thunderbolts struck gourd after gourd, and from them came rivers of water, animals, both tame and wild, domestic fowls and birds of the air, and every useful plant. So was the earth filled again with life in all its varied forms.

According to another version of the Shan legend, the persons who survived the deluge were seven men and seven women, who were more righteous than their neighbours and escaped death by crawling into the dry shell of a gigantic gourd, which floated on the face of the waters. On emerging from this ark of safety, they were fruitful and replenished the drowned earth

The secluded Alpine valley of Cashmeer, which by its delightful climate and beautiful scenery, at once luxuriant and sublime, has earned for itself the title of the Earthly Paradise of India, is almost completely surrounded by the lofty mountain-ranges of the Himalayas, their sides belted with magnificent forests, above which extend rich Alpine pastures close up to the limit of eternal snow. A native tradition, recorded by the early chroniclers of Cashmeer, relates that the whole of the valley was once occupied by a great lake. One of the oldest of these annals, called the Nilamata Purana, claims to give the sacred legends regarding the origin of the country, together with the special ordinances which Nila, the lord of the Cashmeerian Nagas, laid down for the regulation of its religious worship and ceremonies. In this chronicle, which may date from the sixth or seventh century of our era, we read how at the beginning of the present Kalpa, or great era of the world, the valley was filled by a lake called Satisaras, that is, the Lake of Sati. Now in the period of the seventh Manu, a certain demon named Jalodbhava or "water-born," resided in the lake and caused great distress to all neighbouring countries by the devastations which he spread far and wide. But it so happened that the wise Kasyapa, the father of all Nagas, went on pilgrimage to the holy places of northern India, and there he learned of the ravages of the demon from his son Nila, the king of the Cashmeerian Nagas.

The sage promised to punish the evil-doer, and accordingly repaired to the seat of the great god Brahman to implore his help. His prayer was granted. At Brahman's command, the whole host of gods set off for the lake and took up their posts on the lofty peaks of the Naubandhana Mountain, overlooking the lake ; that is, on the very same mountain on which, according to the Mahabharata, Manu anchored his ship after the great flood. But it was vain to challenge the demon to single combat; for in his own element he was invincible, and he was too cunning to quit it and come forth. In this dilemma the god Vishnu called upon his brother Balabhadra to drain the lake. His brother did so by piercing the mountains with his weapon, the ploughshare ; the water drained away, and in the dry bed of the lake the demon, now exposed to the assaults of his enemies, was attacked by Vishnu, and after a fierce combat was slain by the deity with his war-disc. After that King Kasyapa settled the land of Cashmeer, which had thus been born of the waters. The gods also took up their abode in it, and the various goddesses adorned the country in the shape of rivers.

And a land of rivers and lakes it has been from that day to this. The same legend is told in a briefer form by the Cashmeerian chronicler Kalhana, who wrote in the middle of the twelfth century of our era, and whose work displays an extremely accurate knowledge both of the topography of the valley and of the popular legends still current among the natives And the same story is told, in nearly the same form, by the Mohammedan writers Beddia and Dien: it is alluded to, in a Buddhistic setting, by the famous Chinese pilgrim of the sixth century, Hiuen Tsiang, who lived as an honoured guest for two full years in the happy valley; and it survives to this day in popular tradition.

Now there are physical facts which seem at first sight to support the belief that in comparatively late geological times the valley of Cashmeer was wholly or in great part occupied by a vast lake ; for undoubted lacustrine deposits are to be seen on some of the tablelands of the valley.

Moreover, "the aspect of the province confirms the truth of the legend, the subsidence, of the waters being distinctly defined by horizontal lines on the face of the mountains : it is also not at all unlikely to have been the scene of some great convulsion of nature, as indications of volcanic action are not unfrequent: hot springs are numerous : at particular seasons the ground in various places is sensibly hotter than the atmosphere, and earthquakes are of common occurrence.": Are we then to suppose that a tradition of the occupation of the Vale of Cashmeer by a great lake has survived among the inhabitants from late geological times to the present day ? It is true that in Cashmeer the popular local traditions appear to be peculiarly tenacious of life and to outlive the written traditions of the learned. From the experience gained on his antiquarian tours, Sir Marc Aurel Stein is convinced that, when collected with caution and critically sifted, these local legends may safely be accepted as supplements to the topographical information of our written records ; and their persistence he attributes in large measure to the secluded position of the valley and to the naturally conservative habits of life and thought, which mountain barriers and consequent isolation tend everywhere to foster in Alpine countries. Certainly for ages Cashmeer remained, like Tibet, a hermit land, little known to the outer world and jealously exclusive of strangers. The army of Alexander, on its victorious march through India, passed almost within sight of the gates of Cashmeer ; yet the great captain, thirsting for new worlds to conquer, seems to have heard no whisper of the earthly paradise that lay beyond these snowcapped mountains.

Yet we may reasonably doubt whether any memory of an event so remote as the comparative desiccation of the valley of Cashmeer should survive in human tradition even under circumstances so favourable to its preservation. It is far more likely that the legend owes its origin to a natural inference, based partly on observation of the general features of the country, partly on a knowledge of the drainage operations, which within the memory of man have extended the area of arable land and reduced the area covered by lakes and marshes. " To any one, however ignorant of geology, but acquainted with the latter fact," says Sir Marc Aurel Stein, " the picture of a vast lake originally covering the whole valley might naturally suggest itself. It would be enough for him to stand on a hillside somewhere near the Volur, to look down on the great lake and the adjoining marshes, and to glance then beyond towards that narrow gorge of Baramula where the mountains scarcely seem to leave an opening. It is necessary to bear in mind the singular flights of Hindu imagination as displayed in the Puranas, Mdhdtmyas and similar texts. Those acquainted with them will, I think, be ready to allow that the fact of that remarkable gorge being the single exit for the drainage of the country might alone even have sufficed as a starting-point for the legend."

Thus we may fairly conclude that, like the Samothracian legend of a great flood caused by the bursting of the Black Sea and its consequent union with the Mediterranean, the Cashmeer legend furnishes no evidence of human tradition stretching back into the mists of geological time, but is simply the shrewd guess of intelligent observers, who used their wits to supplement the evidence of their eyes. However, it is to be observed that the Cashmeer story hardly falls under the head of flood legends, since it recounts the desiccation rather than the inundation of a mountain basin. No doubt if the event really happened as it is said to have done, it must have caused a tremendous flood in the lowlands beyond the valley ; but as the disastrous consequences can only have concerned other people, the Cashmeerians naturally say nothing about it.

Stories of a Great Flood in Eastern Asia

According to the Karens of Burma the earth was of old deluged with water, and two brothers saved themselves from the flood on a raft The waters rose till they reached to heaven, when the younger brother saw a mango-tree hanging down from the celestial vault With great presence of mind he clambered up it and ate of the fruit, but the flood, suddenly subsiding, left him suspended in the tree Here the narrative breaks off abruptly, and we are left to conjecture how he extricated himself from his perilous position The Chingpaws or Singphos of Upper Burma, like their brethren in Assam, have a tradition of a great flood They say that when the deluge came, a man Pawpaw Nan-chaung and his sister Chang-hko saved themselves in a large boat.

They had with them nine cocks and nine needles After some days of rain and storm they threw overboard one cock and one needle to see whether the waters were falling But the cock did not crow and the needle was not heard to strike bottom. They did the same thing day after day, but with no better result, till at last on the ninth day the last cock crew and the last needle was heard to strike on a rock Soon after the brother and sister were able to leave their boat, and they wandered about till they came to a cave inhabited by two elves or fairies (nats), a male and a female The elves bade them stay and make themselves useful in clearing the jungle, tilling the ground, hewing wood, and drawing water The brother and sister did so, and soon after the sister gave birth to a child.

While the parents were away at work, the old elfin woman, who was a witch, used to mind the baby ; and whenever the infant squalled, the horrid wretch would threaten, if it did not stop bawling, to make mince meat of it at a place where nine roads met The poor child did not understand the dreadful threat and persisted in giving tongue, till one day the old witch in a fury snatched it up, hurried it to the meeting-place of nine roads, and there hewed it in pieces, and sprinkled the blood and strewed the bits all over the roads and the country round about. But some of the titbits she carried back to her cave and made into a savoury curry. Moreover, she put a block of wood into the baby's empty cradle. And when the mother came back from her work in the evening and asked for her child, the witch said, "It is asleep. Eat your rice." So the mother ate the rice and curry, and then went to the cradle, but in it she found nothing but a block of wood. When she asked the witch where the child was, the witch replied tartly, "You have eaten it."

The poor mother fled from the house, and at the crossroads she wailed aloud and cried to the Great Spirit to give her back her child or avenge its death. The Great Spirit appeared to her and said, "I cannot piece your baby together again, but instead I will make you the mother of all nations of men."

And then from one road there sprang up the Shans, from another the Chinese, from others the Burmese, and the Bengalees, and all the races of mankind ; and the bereaved mother claimed them all as her children, because they all sprang from the scattered fragments of her murdered babe The Bahnars, a primitive tribe of Cochin China, tell how once on a time the kite quarrelled with the crab, and pecked the crab's skull so hard that he made a hole in it, which may be seen down to this very day. To avenge this injury to his skull, the crab caused the sea and the rivers to swell till the waters reached the sky, and all living beings perished except two, a brother and a sister, who were saved in a huge chest.

They took with them into the chest a pair of every sort of animal, shut the lid tight, and floated on the waters for seven days and seven nights. Then the brother heard a cock crowing outside, for the bird had been sent by the spirits to let our ancestors know that the flood had abated, and that they could come forth from the chest. So the brother let all the birds fly away, then he let loose the animals, and last of all he and his sister walked out on the dry land. They did not know how they were to live, for they had eaten up all the rice that was stored in the chest. However, a black ant brought them two grains of rice : the brother planted them, and next morning the plain was covered with a rich crop. So the brother and sister were saved

A legend of a deluge has been recorded by a French missionary among the Bannavs, one of the savage tribes which inhabit the mountains and tablelands between Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia. "If you ask them respecting the origin of mankind, all they tell you is, that the father of the human race was saved from an immense inundation by means of a large chest in which he shut himself up; but of the origin or creator of this father they know nothing Their traditions do not reach beyond the Deluge ; but they will tell you that in the beginning one grain of rice sufficed to fill a saucepan and furnish a repast for a whole family This is a souvenir of the first age of the world, that fugitive period of innocence and happiness which poets have called the golden age."

The tradition is probably only an abridged form of the deluge legend which, as we have just seen, is recorded by another French missionary among the Bahnars, who may be supposed to be the same with the Bannavs. As to the racial affinity of the tribe, the missionary writes : "To what race do the Bannavs belong? That is the first question I asked myself on arriving here, and I must confess that I cannot yet answer it; all I can say is, that in all points they differ from the Annamites and Chinese ; neither do they resemble the Laotians or Cam-bodians, but appear to have a common origin with the Cédans, Halangs, Reungao, and Giaraïe, their neighbours. Their countenances, costumes, and belief are nearly the same; and the language, although it differs in each tribe, has yet many words common to all; the construction, moreover, is perfectly identical. I have not visited the various tribes of the south, but from all I have heard I conclude that these observations apply to them also, and that all the savages inhabiting the vast country lying between Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia, belong to the same great branch of the human family."

The Benua-Jakun, a primitive aboriginal tribe of the Malay Peninsula, in the State of Johor, say that the ground on which we stand is not solid, but is merely a skin covering an abyss of water. In ancient times Pirman, that is the deity, broke up this skin, so that the world was drowned and destroyed by a great flood. However, Pirman had created a man and a woman and put them in a ship of pulai wood, which was completely covered over and had no opening. In this ship the pair floated and tossed about for a time, till at last the vessel came to rest, and the man and woman, nibbling their way through its side, emerged on dry ground and beheld this our world stretching away on all sides to the horizon. At first all was very dark, for there was neither morning nor evening, because the sun had not yet been created. When it grew light, they saw seven small shrubs of rhododendron and seven clumps of the grass called sambau. They said one to another, "Alas, in what a sad plight are we, without either children or grandchildren!" But some time afterwards the woman conceived in the calves of her legs, and from her right calf came forth a male, and from her left calf came forth a female.

That is why the offspring of the same womb may not marry. All mankind are the descendants of the two children of the first pair

In Kelantan, a district of the Malay Peninsula, they say that one day a feast was made for a circumcision, and all manner of beasts were pitted to fight against one another. There were fights between elephants, and fights between buffaloes, and fights between bullocks, and fights between goats ; and at last there were fights between dogs and cats. And when the fights took place between dogs and cats, a great flood came down from the mountains, and overwhelmed the people that dwelt in the plains. And they were all drowned in that flood, save only some two or three menials who had been sent up into the hills to gather firewood. Then the sun, moon, and stars were extinguished, and there was a great darkness. And when light returned, there was no land but a great sea, and all the abodes of men had been overwhelmed

The legend of a great flood plays an important part in the traditionary lore of the Lolos, an aboriginal race who occupy the almost impregnable mountain fastnesses of Yunnan and other provinces of South-western China, where they have succeeded in maintaining their independence against the encroachments of the Chinese.

A robust and warlike people, they not only make raids into Chinese territory for the purpose of levying blackmail and carrying off prisoners, whom they hold to ransom, but they actually maintain a large population of slaves entirely composed of Chinese captives Yet in spite of their hostility to the Chinese, with whom they never intermarry, they appear to belong to the same race ; at least they speak a monosyllabic language of extreme simplicity, which belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Tibeto-Chinese family.

They are so far from being savages that they have even invented a mode of writing, pictographic in origin, in which they have recorded their legends, songs, genealogies, and religious ritual.

Their manuscripts, copied and recopied, have been handed down from generation to generation They bear family surnames, which are said always to signify a plant or an animal; the members of each family believe that they are descended from the species of animal or. plant whose name they bear, and they will neither eat nor even touch it. These facts suggest the existence of totemisrn among the Lolos. At the same time the Lolos believe in patriarchs who now live in the sky, but who formerly dwelt on earth, where they attained to the great ages of six hundred and sixty and even nine hundred and ninety years, thereby surpassing Methusaleh himself in longevity. Each family, embracing the persons united by a common surname, pays its devotions to a particular patriarch.

The most famous of these legendary personages is a certain Tse-gu-dzih, who enjoys many of the attributes of divinity. He it was who brought death into the world by opening the fatal box which contained the seeds of mortality; and he too it was who caused the deluge. The catastrophe happened thus. Men were wicked, and Tse-gu-dzih sent down a messenger to them on earth, asking for some flesh and blood from a mortal. No one would give them except only one man, Du-mu by name. So Tse-gu-dzih in wrath locked the rain - gates, and the waters mounted to the sky. But Du-mu, who complied with the divine injunction, was saved, together with his four sons, in a log hollowed out of a Pieris tree; and with them in the log were likewise saved otters, wild ducks and lampreys. From his four sons are descended the civilized peoples who can write, such as the Chinese and the Lolos.

But the ignorant races of the world are the descendants of the wooden figures whom Du-mu constructed after the deluge in order to repeople the drowned earth. To this day the ancestral tablets which the Lolos worship on set days of the year and on all the important occasions of life, are made out of the same sort of tree as that in which their great forefather found safety from the waters of the deluge ; and nearly all the Lolo legends begin with some reference to him or to the great flood. In considering the origin of this flood legend it should be mentioned that the Lolos generally keep a Sabbath of rest every sixth day, when ploughing is forbidden, and in some places women are not allowed to sew or wash clothes. Taken together with this custom, the Lolo traditions of the patriarchs and of the flood appear to betray Christian influence; and Mr. A. Henry may well be right in referring them all to the teaching of Nestorian missionaries ; for Nestorian churches existed in Yunnan in the thirteenth century when Marco Polo travelled in the country, and the Nestorian Alopen is said to have arrived in China as early as 6 A.D.

The Chinese have a tradition of a great flood which happened in the reign of the emperor Yao, who reigned in the twenty-fourth century before our era. In his distress the emperor addressed his prime minister, saying, "Ho! President of the Four Mountains, destructive in their overflow are the waters of the inundation. In their vast extent they embrace the hills and overtop the great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods, so that the lower people groan and murmur! Is there a capable man to whom I can assign the correction of this calamity?" All the court replied to the emperor, saying, "Is there not Khwan?" But the emperor answered, "Alas! how perverse is he! He is disobedient to orders, and tries to injure his peers." The prime minister rejoined, "Well, but try whether he can accomplish the work." So the emperor employed Khwan, and said to him, "Go, and be reverent!" Thus put on his mettle Khwan worked assiduously for nine years, but he laboured in vain, for at the end of the nine years the work was still unaccomplished, the floods were still out. Yet did his son Yu afterwards cope successfully with the inundation, accomplishing all that he had undertaken and showing his superiority to other men.

This Chinese tradition has been by some people forcibly identified with the Biblical account of the Noachian deluge, but in truth it hardly belongs to the class of diluvial legends at all, since it obviously records merely a local, though widespread, inundation, not a universal cataclysm in which the greater part of mankind perished. The event it describes may well have been a real flood caused by the Yellow River, a great and very rapid stream, partially enclosed by artificial and ill-constructed banks and dykes, which in modern times have often burst and allowed the water to spread devastation over the surrounding country. Hence the river is a source of perpetual anxiety and expense to the Chinese Government; and it is the opinion of a modern observer that a repetition of the great flood of Yao's time might still occur and lay the most fertile and populous plains of China under water.

That the Chinese were totally unacquainted with traditions of a universal deluge may be affirmed on the high authority of a Chinese emperor. In the ninth century of our era an Arab traveller, named Ibn-Wahab, of Koraishite origin, of the family of Habbar Ben el-Aswad, made his way by sea from Bassorah to India and thence to China. Arrived there, he sought an interview with the Chinese emperor, alleging as part of his credentials that he was of the family of the Prophet Mohammed. The emperor caused inquiries to be instituted on this point, and being satisfied as to the truth of the allegation, he admitted the traveller to his presence and held a long conversation with him through an interpreter. The Arab has recorded at some length what passed between him and his august interlocutor. Amongst other things the emperor asked him, through the interpreter, whether he could recognize his Lord, that is to say, the Prophet Mohammed, if he should see him. "How can I see him?" said the Arab, "he is with God." "I do not mean it literally," replied the emperor, "but in a representation." The Arab answered that he could. The emperor then ordered a box to be brought; and when it was before him, he took a casket out of it, and said to the interpreter, "Show him his Lord." The Arab looked. "And I saw," he tells us, " in the casket, the images of the prophets. My lips muttered benedictions upon them. The king did not know that I knew them ; hence, he said to the interpreter, ' Ask him why he moves his lips.' He interrogated me, and I answered him that I was pronouncing benedictions upon the prophets.

He asked me further how I recognized them, and I told him that I knew them by the attributes with which they were represented. ' This,' I exclaimed, ' is Núh in the ark ; he has been saved with those who were with him whilst God submerged the whole earth, and all that was on it.' He smiled and said, ' It is Núh, as thou sayest, but it is not true that the whole earth was inundated. The flood occupied only a part of the globe, and did not reach our country. Your traditions are correct, as far as that part of the earth is concerned which you inhabit; but we, the inhabitants of China, of India, of es-Sind, and other nations, do not agree with your account ; nor have our forefathers left us a tradition agreeing with yours on this head. As to thy belief that the whole earth was covered with water, I must remark that this would be so remarkable an event that the terror would keep up its recollection, and all the nations would have handed it down to their posterity.' endeavoured to answer him, and to bring forth arguments against his assertion in defence of my statement."l The Arab has not reported the arguments with which he maintained the truth of the Noachian tradition, but we may surmise that they did not succeed in shaking the incredulity of the sceptical emperor.

The Kamchadales have a tradition of a great flood which covered the whole land in the early days of the world. A remnant of the people saved themselves on large rafts made of tree-trunks bound together ; on these they loaded their property and provisions, and on these they drifted about, dropping stones tied to straps instead of anchors in order to prevent the flood from sweeping them away out to sea. When at last the water of the deluge sank, it left the people and their rafts stranded high and dry on the tops of the mountains

In a Chinese Encyclopaedia there occurs the following passage : "Eastern Tartary.—In travelling from the shore of the Eastern Sea toward Che-lu, neither brooks nor ponds are met with in the country, although it is intersected by mountains and valleys. Nevertheless there are found in the sand very far away from the sea, oyster-shells and the shields of crabs. The tradition of the Mongols who inhabit the country is, that it has been said from time immemorial that in remote antiquity the waters of the deluge flooded the district, and when they retired, the places where they had been made their appearance covered with sand."

Stories of a Great Flood in the Indian Archipelago

The Battas or Bataks of Sumatra say that in the beginning of time the earth rested on the head, or rather on the three horns, of Naga Padoha, a monster who is described as a serpent with the horns of a cow, but who appears to have been also provided with hands and feet. When Naga Padoha grew weary of supporting the earth on his horns, he shook his head, and the earth sank into the water.

Thereupon the high god Batara Guru set about recovering it from the watery abyss. For that purpose he sent down his daughter Puti-orla-bulan; indeed she requested to be despatched on this beneficent mission. So down she came, riding on a white owl and accompanied by a dog. But she found all the nether world so covered with water that there was no ground for the soles of her feet to rest upon. In this emergency her divine father Batara Guru came to the rescue of his child, and let Mount Bakarra fall from heaven to be an abode for her. It may be seen in the land of the Battas to this day, and from it gradually sprang all the rest of the habitable earth. Batara Guru's daughter had afterwards three sons and three daughters, from whom the whole of mankind are descended, but who the father of them all may have been is not revealed by the legend. The restored earth was again supported on the horns of Naga Padoha ; and from that time forward there has been a constant struggle between him and Batara Guru, the monster always trying to rid himself of his burden, and the deity always endeavouring to prevent him from so doing.

Hence come the frequent earthquakes, which shake the world in general and the island of Sumatra in particular. At last, when the monster proved obstreperous, Batara Guru sent his son Layang-layang mandi (which means the diving swallow) to tie Naga Padoha's hands and feet. But even when he was thus fettered, the monster continued to shake his head, so that earthquakes have not ceased to happen. And he will go on shaking himself till he snaps his fetters. Then the earth will again sink into the sea, and the sun will approach to within an ell of this our world. The men of that time will, according to their merit, either be transported to heaven or cast into the flaming cauldron in which Batara Guru torments the wicked until they have expiated their sins. At the destruction of the world, the fire of the cauldron will join with the fire of the sun to consume the material universe.

A less grandiose version of the Batta belief, which in the preceding form unites the reminiscence of a universal flood with the prophecy of a future destruction of the earth by water and fire, is recorded by a modern traveller, who visited the Battas in their mountain home. According to him, the people say that, when the earth grew old and dirty, the Creator, whom they call Debata, sent a great flood to destroy every living thing. The last human pair had taken refuge on the top of the highest mountain, and the waters of the deluge had already reached to their knees, when the Lord of All repented of his resolution to make an end of mankind. So he took a clod of earth, kneaded it into shape, tied it to a thread, and laid it on the rising flood, and the last pair stepped on it and were saved. As the descendants of the couple multiplied, the clod increased in size till it became the earth which we all inhabit at this day.

The natives of Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, say that in days of old there was a strife between the mountains of their country as to which of them was the highest. The strife vexed their great ancestor Balugu Luomewona, and in his vexation he went to the window and said, "Ye mountains, I will cover you all!" So he took a golden comb and threw it into the sea, and it became a huge crab, which stopped up the sluices whereby the waters of the sea usually run away. The consequences of the stoppage were disastrous. The ocean rose higher and higher till only the tops of two or three mountains in Nias still stood above the heaving billows. All the people who with their cattle had escaped to these mountains were saved, and all the rest were drowned. That is how the great ancestor of the islanders settled the strife between the mountains ; and the strife is proverbial among his descendants to the present day.

The natives of Engano, another island to the west of Sumatra, have also their story of a great flood. Once on a time, they say, the tide rose so high that it overflowed the island and every living being was drowned, except one woman. She owed her preservation to the fortunate circumstance that, as she drifted along on the tide, her hair caught in a thorny tree, to which she was thus enabled to cling. When the flood sank, she came down from the tree, and saw with sorrow that she was left all alone in the world. Beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, she wandered inland in the search for food, but finding nothing to eat, she returned disconsolately to the beach, where she hoped to catch a fish. A fish, indeed, she saw ; but when she tried to catch it, the creature glided into one of the corpses that were floating on the water or weltering on the shore. Not to be balked, the woman picked up a stone and struck the corpse a smart blow therewith. But the fish leaped from its hiding-place and made off in the direction of the interior. The woman followed, but hardly had she taken a few steps when, to her great surprise, she met a living man. When she asked him what he did there, seeing that she herself was the sole survivor of the flood, he answered that somebody had knocked on his dead body, and that in consequence he had returned to life. The woman now related to him her experiences, and together they resolved to try whether they could not restore all the other dead to life in like manner by knocking on their corpses with stones. No sooner said than done.

The drowned men and women revived under the knocks, and thus was the island repeopled after the great flood.

The Ibans or Sea Dyaks of Sarawak, in Borneo, are fond of telling a story which relates how the present race of men survived a great deluge, and how their ancestress discovered the art of making fire. The story runs thus. Once upon a time some Dyak women went to gather young bamboo shoots for food. Having got them, they walked through the jungle till they came to what they took to be a great fallen tree. So they sat down on it and began to pare the bamboo shoots, when to their astonishment the trunk of the tree exuded drops of blood at every cut of their knives. Just then up came some men, who saw at once that what the women were sitting on was not a tree but a gigantic boa-constrictor in a state of torpor. They soon killed the serpent, cut it up, and carried the flesh home to eat. While they were busy frying the pieces, strange noises were heard to issue from the frying-pan, and a torrential rain began to fall and never ceased falling till all the hills, except the highest, were submerged and the world was drowned, all because these wicked men had killed and fried the serpent.

Men and animals all perished in the flood, except one woman, a dog, a rat, and a few small creatures, who fled to the top of a very high mountain. There, seeking shelter from the pouring rain, the woman noticed that the dog had found a warm place under a creeper; for the creeper was swaying to and fro in the wind and was warmed by rubbing against the trunk of the tree She took the hint, and rubbing the creeper hard against a piece of wood she produced fire for the first time. That is how the art of making fire by means of the fire-drill was discovered after the great flood Having no husband the woman took the fire-drill for her mate, and by its help she gave birth to a son called Simpang-impang, who, as his name implies, was but half a man, since he had only one arm, one leg, one eye, one ear, one cheek, half a body, and half a nose. These natural defects gave great offence to his playmates the animals, and at last he was able to supply them by striking a bargain with the Spirit of the Wind, who had carried off some rice which Simpang-impang had spread out to dry. At first, when Simpang-impang demanded compensation for this injury, the Spirit of the Wind flatly refused to pay him a farthing ; but being vanquished in a series of contests with Simpang-impang, he finally consented, instead of paying him in gongs or other valuables, of which indeed he had none, to make a whole man of him by supplying him with the missing parts and members Simpang-impang gladly accepted the proposal, and that is why mankind have been provided with the usual number of arms and legs ever since.

Another Dyak version of the story relates how, when the flood began, a certain man called Trow made a boat out of a large wooden mortar, which had hitherto served for pounding rice. In this vessel he embarked with his wife, a dog, a pig, a fowl, a cat, and other live creatures, and so launched out on the deep. The crazy ship outrode the storm, and when the flood had subsided, Trow and his wife and the animals disembarked. How to repeople the earth after the destruction of nearly the entire human race was now the problem which confronted Trow ; and in order to grapple with it he had recourse to polygamy, fashioning for himself new wives out of a stone, a log, and anything else that came to hand. So he soon had a large and flourishing family, who learned to till the ground and became the ancestors of various Dyak tribes The Ot-Danoms, a tribe of Dutch Borneo in the valley of the Barito, tell of a great deluge which drowned many people. Only one mountain peak rose above the water, and the few people who were able to escape to it in boats dwelt on it for three months, till the flood subsided and the dry land appeared once more.

The Bare'e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes also tell of a flood which once covered the highest mountains, all but the summit of Mount Wawo Pebato, and in proof of their story they point to the sea-shells which are to be found on the tops of hills two thousand feet and more above the level of the sea. Nobody escaped the flood except a pregnant woman and a pregnant mouse, who saved themselves in a pig's trough and floated about, paddling with a pot-ladle instead of an oar, till the waters sank down and the earth again became habitable. Just then the woman, looking about for rice to sow, spied a sheaf of rice hanging from an uprooted tree, which drifted ashore on the spot where she was standing. With the help of the mouse, who climbed up the tree and brought down the sheaf, she was able to plant rice again.

But before she fetched down the sheaf, the mouse stipulated that as a recompense for her services mice should thenceforth have the right to eat up part of the harvest. That is why the mice come every year to fetch the reward of their help from the fields of ripe rice ; only they may not strip the fields too bare. As for the woman, she in due time gave birth to a son, whom she took, for want of another, to be her husband. By him she had a son and daughter, who became the ancestors of the present race of mankind. In Minahassa, a district of northern Celebes, there is a mountain called Lankooe, and the natives say that on the top of that mountain the dove which Noah sent out of the ark plucked the olive-branch which she brought back to the patriarch The story is clearly due to Mohammedan or Christian influence. In a long Malay poem, taken down in the island of Sunda, we read how Noah and his family were saved in the ark from the great flood, which lasted forty days, and during the prevalence of which all mountains were submerged except Goonoong Padang and Goonoong Galoonggoong.

The Alfoors of Ceram, a large island between Celebes and New Guinea, relate that after a great flood, which overwhelmed the whole world, the mountain Noesakoe appeared above the sinking tide, its sides clothed with great trees, of which the leaves were shaped like the female organs of generation. Only three persons survived on the top of the mountain, but the sea-eagle brought them tidings that other mountain peaks had emerged from the waters. So the three persons went thither, and by means of the remarkable leaves of the trees they repeopled the world. The inhabitants of Rotti, a small island to the south-west of Timor, say that in former times the sea flooded the earth, so that all men and animals were drowned and all plants and herbs beaten down to the earth. Not a spot of dry ground was left. Even the high mountains were submerged, only the peak of Laki-mola, in Bilba, still rose solitary over the waves. On that mountain a man and his wife and children had taken refuge. After some months the tide still came creeping up and up the mountain, and the man and his family were in great fear, for they thought it would soon reach them.

So they prayed the sea to return to his old bed The sea answered "I will do so, if you give me an animal whose hairs I cannot count." The man thereupon heaved first a pig, then a goat, then a dog, and then a hen into the flood, but all in vain ; the sea could number the hairs of every one of them, and it still came on. At last he threw in a cat: this was too much for the sea, it could not do the sum, and sank abashed accordingly. After that the osprey appeared and sprinkled some dry earth on the waters, and the man and his wife and children descended the mountain to seek a new home. Thereupon the Lord commanded the osprey to bring all kinds of seed to the man, such as maize, millet, rice, beans, pumpkins, and sesame, in order that he might sow them and live with his family on the produce That is the reason why in Rotti, at the end of harvest, people set up a sheaf of rice on the open place of the village as an offering to Mount Lakimola Everybody cooks rice, and brings it with betel-nuts, coco-nuts, tobacco, bananas, and breadfruit as an oblation to the mountain ; they feast and dance all kinds of dances to testify their gratitude, and beg him to grant a good harvest next year also, so that the people may have plenty to eat.

The Nages, in the centre of the East Indian island of Flores, say that Dooy, the forefather of their tribe, was saved in a ship from the great flood. His grave is under a stone platform, which occupies the centre of the public square at Boa Wai, the tribal capital. The harvest festival, which is attended not only by the villagers but also by people from far and near, takes place round this grave of their great ancestor. The people dance round the grave, and sacrifices of buffaloes are offered. The spirits of all dead members of the tribe, wherever they may be, whether in the air, or in the mountains, or in the caves and dens of the earth, are invited to attend the festival and are believed to be invisibly present at it. On this occasion the civil chief of the tribe is gorgeously arrayed in golden jewellery, and on his head he wears the golden model of a ship with seven masts in memory of the escape of their great ancestor from the flood.

Stories of a great flood are told also by some of the wild tribes of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands. One such tale is said to be current among the Atás of the Davao District, who are supposed to be descendants of an invading people that intermarried with the Negritoes and other aboriginal tribes. Their legend of the deluge runs thus. The greatest of all the spirits is Manama, who made the first men from blades of grass, weaving them together until they assumed the human form. In this manner he created eight persons, male and female, who later became the ancestors of the Atás and all the neighbouring tribes. Long afterwards the water covered the whole earth, and all the Atás were drowned except two men and a woman. The waters carried them far away, and they would have perished if a great eagle had not come to their aid. The bird offered to carry them on its back to their homes. One of the men refused, but the other man and the woman accepted the offer and returned to Mapula Another version of the story is told by the Mandayas, another wild tribe of the same district, who inhabit a rugged, densely wooded region, where the mountains descend almost to the water's edge, forming high sheer cliffs at their base. They say that many generations ago a great flood happened, which drowned all the inhabitants of the world except one pregnant woman.

She prayed that her child might be a boy. Her prayer was answered, and she gave birth to a boy whose name was Uacatan. When he grew up, he took his mother to wife, and from their union all the Mandayas are descended.

Further, stories of a great flood are current among the wild tribes which occupy the central mountains and eastern coasts of Formosa ; and as these tribes apparently belong by race and language to the Malayan family, their traditions of a deluge may appropriately find a place here, though the large island which is their home lies off the coast of China. The stories have been recorded by a Japanese gentleman, Mr. Shinji Ishii, who resided for some years in Formosa for the sake of studying the natives. He has very kindly placed his unpublished manuscripts at my disposal for the purposes of this work.

One of the tribes which inhabit the eastern coast of Formosa are the Ami. They are supposed to have been the last to arrive in this part of the island. Unlike the rest of the aborigines, they trace the descent of blood and property through their mothers instead of through their fathers, and they have a peculiar system of age-grades, that is, they classify all members of the tribe in a series of ranks according to their respective ages Among these people Mr. Ishii discovered the story of a great flood in several different versions. One of them, recorded at the village of Kibi, runs as follows :—

In ancient times there existed the god Kakumodan Sappatorroku and the goddess Budaihabu. They descended to a place called Taurayan, together with two children, the boy Sura and the girl Nakao. At the same time they brought with them a pig and a chicken, which they reared. But one day it happened that two other gods, named Kabitt and Aka, were hunting near by, and seeing the pig and the chicken they coveted them. So they went up to the house and asked Kakumodan to give them the creatures, but having nothing to offer in exchange they met with a flat refusal. That angered them, and to avenge the affront they plotted to kill Kakumodan. To assist them in carrying out this nefarious design they called in a loud voice on the four sea-gods, Mahahan, Mariyaru, Marimokoshi, and Kosomatora, who readily consented to bear a hand. "In five days from now," they said, "when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain, where there are stars."

So on the fifth day, without waiting for the sound, Kabitt and Aka fled to the mountain where there were stars. When they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher, till soon Kakumodan's house was flooded. But Kakumodan and his wife escaped from the swelling tide, for they climbed up a ladder to the sky. Yet so urgent was the danger and so great their haste, that they had no time to rescue their two children. Accordingly, when they had reached their place of safety up aloft, they remembered their offspring, and feeling great anxiety on their account they called them in a loud voice, but no voice answered. However, the two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned. For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of the house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain. The brother and sister now found themselves alone in the world ; and though they feared to offend the ancestral gods by contracting an incestuous marriage, they nevertheless became man and wife, and their union was blest with five children, three boys and two girls, whose names are recorded. Yet the pair sought to mitigate or avert the divine wrath by so regulating their conjugal intercourse that they came into contact with each other as little as possible ; and for that purpose they interposed a mat between them in the marriage bed. The first gram of millet was produced from the wife's ear during her first pregnancy, and in due time husband and wife learned the proper ritual to be observed in the cultivation of that cereal.

At the village of Baran a somewhat different version of the story was recorded by Mr. Ishii. According to this latter version the great flood was due not to a rising of the sea, but to an earthquake, followed by the bursting forth of hot subterranean waters. They say that at that time the moun-tains crumbled down, the earth gaped, and from the fissure a hot spring gushed forth, which flooded the whole face of the earth. Many people were drowned ; indeed few living things survived the ravages of the inundation. However, two sisters and a brother escaped in a wooden mortar, which floated with them southward along the coast to a place called Rarauran. There they landed and climbed to the top of Mount Kaburugan to survey the country round about. Then they separated, the sisters going to the south and the brother to the west, to search for a good land ; but finding none they returned once more to Rarauran. Again they ascended the mountain, and the brother and his younger sister reached the summit, but the elder sister was so tired that she remained behind half-way up. When her brother and her younger sister searched for her, they found to their sorrow that she was turned into a stone.

After that they desired to return to their native land, from which they had drifted in the wooden mortar. But when they came to examine the mortar, they found it so rotten and leaky that they dared not venture to put to sea in it again. So they wandered away on foot. One day the forlorn wanderers were alarmed by the sight of smoke rising at a distance. Expecting nothing less than a second eruption and a second flood, they hurried away, the brother taking his sister by the hand to hasten her steps. But she was so weary with wandering that she could not go a step farther and fell to the ground. So there they were forced to stay for many days. Meantime the symptoms which had alarmed them had ceased to threaten, and they resolved to settle on the spot.

But they were now all alone in the land, and they reflected with apprehension on the misery of the childless old age which seemed in store for them. In this dilemma, as there was nobody else for them to marry, they thought they had better marry each other. Yet they felt a natural delicacy at doing so, and in their perplexity they resolved to submit their scruples to the judgment of the sun. So next morning, when the sun was rising out of the sea, the brother inquired of it in a loud voice whether he might marry his sister. The sun answered, apparently without hesitation, that he might. The brother was very glad to hear it, and married his sister accordingly. A few months afterwards the wife conceived, and, with her husband's help, gathered china-grass, spun it into yarn, and wove the yarn into clothes for the expected baby. But when her time came, to the bitter disappointment of both parents, she was delivered of two abortions that were neither girl nor boy. In their vexation they tore up the baby-linen and threw it, with the abortions, into the river. One of the abortions swam straight down the river, and the other swam across the river ; the one became the ancestor of fish, and the other the ancestor of crabs. Next morning the brother inquired of the moon why fish and crabs should thus be born from human parents. The moon made answer, "You two are brother and sister, and marriage between you is strictly prohibited. As neither of you can find another spouse, you must place a mat between you in the marriage bed." The advice was accepted, and soon afterwards the wife gave birth to a stone. They were again painfully surprised, and said, "The moon is mocking us. Who ever heard of a woman giving birth to a stone?" In their impatience they were about to heave the stone into the river, when the moon appeared and checked them, saying, "Although it is a stone, you must take great care of it." They obeyed the injunction and kept the stone very carefully.

Afterwards they descended the mountain and settled in a rich fat land called Arapanai. In time the husband died, and the wife was left with no other companion than the white stone to which she had given birth. But the moon, pitying her loneliness and grief, informed the woman that soon she would have a companion. And sure enough, only five days later, the stone swelled up, and four children came forth from it, some of them wearing shoes and others barefooted. Those that wore shoes were probably the ancestors of the Chinese.

A third version of the Ami story was recorded by Mr. Ishii at the village of Pokpok. Like the preceding versions, it relates how a brother and sister escaped in a wooden mortar from a destructive deluge, in which almost all living beings perished ; how they landed on a high mountain, married, begat offspring, and founded the village of Pokpok in a hollow of the hills, where they thought they would be secure against another deluge.
The Tsuwo, a tribe of head-hunters in the mountainous interior of Formosa, have also a story of a great flood, which they told to Mr. Ishii at the village of Paichana. When their ancestors were living dispersed in all directions, there occurred a mighty inundation whereby plain and mountains alike were covered with water.

Then all the people fled and took refuge on the top of Mount Niitaka-yama, and there they stayed until the flood subsided, and the hills and valleys emerged once more from the watery waste. After that the survivors descended in groups from the mountains and took their several ways over the land as chance or inclination prompted them. They say that it was while they dwelt on the top of the mountain, during the great flood, that they first conceived the idea of hunting for human heads. At first they resorted to it simply as a pastime, cutting off the head of a bad boy and hoisting it on the point of a bamboo, to the great amusement of the bystanders. But afterwards, when they had descended from the mountain and settled in separate villages, the young men of each village took arms and went out to decapitate their neighbours in grim earnest. That, they say, was the origin of the practice of head-hunting.

The Tsuwo of the same village also tell how they obtained fire during the great flood. For in their hurried retreat to the mountain they had no time to take fire with them, and for a while they were hard put to it by the cold. Just then some one spied a sparkle like the twinkling of a star on the top of a neighbouring mountain. So the people said, "Who will go thither and bring fire for us?" Then a goat came forward and said, "I will go and bring back the fire." So saying, the noble animal plunged into the swelling flood and swam straight for the mountain, guided by the starlike twinkling of the fire on its top. The people awaited its return in great anxiety. After a while it reappeared from out the darkness, swimming with a burning cord attached to its horns. Nearer and nearer it drew to the shore, but at the same time lower and lower burned the fire on the cord. Would the goat reach the bank before the flame had burned itself out ? The excitement among the people was intense, but none dared to dive into the angry surges and swim to the rescue of the animal. Tired with its long and strenuous exertions, the goat swam more and more feebly, till at last it drooped its head, the water closed over it, and the fire was out. After that the people despatched a taoron (?) on the same errand, and it succeeded in bringing the fire safe to land. So pleased were the people at its success, that they all gathered round the animal and patted it.

That is why the creature has such a shiny skin and so tiny a body to this day.

Further, the Tsuwo of the same village relate how the great flood was drained by the disinterested exertions of a wild pig, and how the natural features of the country were artificially moulded when all the water had run away. They say that they tried various plans for draining the water, but all in vain, until a large wild pig came forward and said, "I will go into the water, and by breaking a bank in a lower reach of the river, I may cause the flood to abate. In case I should be drowned in the river I would beg you, of your kindness, to care for my orphan children, and to give them potatoes every day. If you consent to this proposal, I am willing to risk my life in your service." The people gladly closed with this generous offer; the pig plunged into the water, and swimming with the current, disappeared in the distance. The efforts of the animal were crowned with success, for very soon afterwards the water of the flood suddenly sank, and the crests of the mountains began to appear above it. Rejoiced at their escape, the people resolved to make a river with the help of the animals, apparently for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of the great flood.

As they descended from Mount Niitaka-yama, where they had taken refuge, a great snake offered to act as their guide, and by gliding straight down the slope he hollowed out a bed for the stream. Next thousands of little birds, at the word of command, came each with a pebble in its beak, and by depositing the pebbles in the channel of the river they paved it, as we see it to this day. But the banks of the river had still to be formed, and for this purpose the services of the animals were enlisted. By treading with their feet and working with a will all together, they soon fashioned the river banks and valleys. The only bird that did not help in this great work was the eagle; instead of swooping down he flew high in air, and as a punishment he has never since been allowed to drink of the river water, but is obliged to slake his thirst at the puddles in the hollow trunks of trees. In this way the valleys and rivers were fashioned, but there was as yet no plain. Then the goddess Hipararasa came from the south and made a plain by crushing the mountains. She began in the south and worked up along the western part, levelling the mountains as she went. But when she came to the central range she was confronted by an angry bear, which said, "We are fond of the mountains. If you make them into a plain, we shall lose our dwelling-places." With that he bit and wounded the child of the goddess. Surprised by this attack, the goddess desisted from her work of destruction in order to tend her wounded child. Meantime the earth hardened, so that not even the power of God could level the mountains. That is why the central range still stands in Formosa.

The Bunun, another tribe in the interior of Formosa, whose territory borders on that of the Tsuwo to the east, tell stories of a great flood in which a gigantic snake and crab figure prominently. They say that once upon a time, in the land where their ancestors lived there fell a heavy rain for many days, and to make matters worse a huge snake lay across the river, blocking up the current, so that the whole land was flooded. The people escaped to the top of the highest mountain, but such was the strength of the rising tide that they trembled at the sight of it. Just then a crab appeared opportunely and cut the body of the snake clean through with its nippers. So the flood soon subsided ; but many people were drowned and few survived. In another version of the Bunun story the cause of the flood is related somewhat differently. A gigantic crab tried to devour a big snake, clutching it fast in its nippers. But the snake contrived to shake off its assailant and escape to the sea. At once a great flood occurred ; the waves washed the mountains, and the whole world was covered with water.

The ancestors of the Bunun took refuge on Mount Usabeya (Niitaka-yama) and Mount Shinkan, where they made shift to live by hunting, till the water subsided and they returned to their former abode. There they found that their fields and gardens had been washed away ; but fortunately a stalk of millet had been preserved, the seeds' were planted, and on the produce the people subsisted. They say that many mountains and valleys were formed by the great flood, for before that time the land had been quite flat.

The primitive inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, have a legend of a great flood, which may be related here, though their islands do not strictly belong to the Indian Archipelago. They say that some time after they had been created, men grew disobedient and regardless of the commands which the Creator had given them at their creation. So in anger he sent a great flood which covered the whole land, except perhaps Saddle Peak where the Creator himself resided. All living creatures, both men and animals, perished in the waters, all save two men and two women, who, having the good luck to be in a canoe at the time when the catastrophe occurred, contrived to escape with their lives. When at last the waters sank, the little company landed, but they found themselves in a sad plight, for all other living creatures were drowned. However, the Creator, whose name was Puluga, kindly helped them by creating animals and birds afresh for their use. But the difficulty remained of lighting a fire, for the flood had extinguished the flames on every hearth, and all things were of course very damp.

Hereupon the ghost of one of their friends, who had been drowned in the deluge, opportunely came to the rescue. Seeing their distress he flew in the form of a kingfisher to the sky, where he found the Creator seated beside his fire. The bird made a dab at a burning brand, intending to carry it off in his beak to his fireless friends on earth, but in his haste or agitation he dropped it on the august person of the Creator himself, who, incensed at the indignity and smarting with pain, hurled the blazing brand at the bird. It missed the mark and whizzing Past him dropped plump from the sky at the very spot where the four people were seated moaning and shivering. That is how mankind recovered the use of fire after the great flood. When they had warmed themselves and had leisure to reflect on what had happened, the four survivors began to murmur at the Creator for his destruction of all the rest of mankind ; and their passion getting the better of them they even plotted to murder him. From this impious attempt they were, however, dissuaded by the Creator himself, who told them, in very plain language, that they had better not try, for he was as hard as wood, their arrows could make no impression on him, and if they dared so much as to lay a finger on him, he would have the blood of every mother's son and daughter of them This dreadful threat had its effect: they submitted to their fate, and the mollified Creator condescended to explain to them, in milder terms, that men had brought the great flood on themselves by wilful disobedience to his commands, and that any repetition of the offence in future would be visited by him with condign punishment That was the last time that the Creator ever appeared to men and conversed with them face to face ; since then the Andaman Islanders have never seen him, but to this day they continue to do his will with fear and trembling.

Stories of a Great Flood in Australia

The Kurnai, an aboriginal Australian tribe of Gippsland, in Victoria, say that a long time ago there was a very great flood ; all the country was under water, and all the black people were drowned except a man and two or three women, who took refuge in a mud island near Port Albert. The water was all round them Just then the pelican, or Bunjil Borun, as the Kurnai call the bird, came sailing by in his canoe, and seeing the distress of the poor people he went to help them One of the women was so beautiful that he fell in love with her When she would have stepped into the canoe, he said, "Not now, next time"; so that after he had ferried all the rest, one by one, across to the mainland, she was left to the last. Afraid of being alone with the ferryman, she did not wait his return on his last trip, but swam ashore and escaped. However, before quitting the island, she dressed up a log in her opossum rug and laid it beside the fire, so that it looked just like herself.When the pelican arrived to ferry her over, he called, "Come on, now." The log made no reply, so the pelican flew into a passion, and rushing up to what he took to be the woman, he lunged out with his foot at her and gave the log a tremendous kick.

Naturally he only hurt his own foot, and what with the pain and the chagrin at the trick that had been played him, he was very angry indeed and began to paint himself white in order that he might fight the husband of the impudent hussy who had so deceived him. He was still engaged in these warlike preparations, and had only painted white one half of his black body, when another pelican came up, and not knowing what to make of such a strange creature, half white and half black, he pecked at him with his beak and killed him. That is why pelicans are now black and white ; before the flood they were black all over

According to the aborigines about Lake Tyers, in Victoria, the way in which the great flood came about was this. Once upon a time all the water in the world was swallowed by a huge frog, and nobody else could get a drop to drink. It was most inconvenient, especially for the fish, who flapped about and gasped on the dry land. So the animals laid their heads together and came to the conclusion that the only way of making the frog disgorge the waters was to tickle his fancy so that he should laugh. Accordingly they gathered before him and cut capers and played pranks that would have caused any ordinary person to die of laughing. But the frog did not even smile. He sat there in gloomy silence, with his great goggle eyes and his swollen cheeks, as grave as a judge. As a last resort the eel stood up on its tail and wriggled and danced about, twisting itself into the most ridiculous contortions. This was more than even the frog could bear. His features relaxed, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks and the water poured out of his mouth. However, the animals had now got more than they had bargained for, since the waters disgorged by the frog swelled into a great flood in which many people perished. Indeed the whole of mankind would have been drowned, if the pelican had not gone about in a canoe picking up the survivors and so saving their lives.

Another legend of a deluge current among the aborigines of Victoria relates how, many long ages ago, the Creator Bundjel was very angry with black people because they did evil. So he caused the ocean to swell by the same process by which Strepsiades in Aristophanes supposed that Zeus made rain to fall from the clouds; and in the rising flood all black people were drowned, except those whom Bundjel loved and catching up from the water fixed as stars in the sky. Nevertheless one man and one woman escaped the deluge by climbing a high tree on a mountain ; so they lived and became the ancestors of the present human race. The Narrinyeri of South Australia say that once on a time a man's two wives ran away from him He pursued them to Encounter Bay, and there seeing them at a distance he cried out in anger, "Let the waters arise and drown them." On that a terrible flood swept over the hills and overtaking the fugitives overwhelmed them, so that they died. To such a height did the waters rise that a certain man named Nepelle, who lived at Rauwoke, was obliged to drag his canoe to the top of the hill which is now called Point Macleay. The dense part of the Milky Way is said to be his canoe floating in the sky.

The natives about Mount Elliot, on the coast of Queensland, say that in the time of their forefathers there happened a great flood, which drowned most of them ; only a few were saved who contrived to escape to the top of a very high mountain, called Bibbiringda, which rises inland from the northern bay of Cape Cleveland.

Stories of a Great Flood in New Guinea and Melanesia

In the Kabadi district of British New Guinea the natives have a tradition that once on a time a certain man Lohero and his younger brother were angry with the people about them, and they put a human bone into a small stream. Soon the great waters came forth, forming a sea, flooding all the low land, and driving the people back to the mountains, till step by step they had to escape to the tops of the highest peaks.

There they lived till the sea receded, when some of them descended to the lowlands, while others remained on the ridges and there built houses and formed plantations The Valmans of Berlin Harbour, on the northern coast of New Guinea, tell how one day the wife of a very good man saw a great fish swimming to the bank. She called to her husband, but at first he could not see the fish. So his wife laughed at him and hid him behind a banana-tree, that he might peep at it through the leaves. When he did catch sight of it at last, he was horribly afraid, and sending for his family, a son and two daughters, he forbade them to catch and eat the fish. But the other people took bow and arrow and a cord, and they caught the fish and drew it to land. Though the good man warned them not to eat of the fish, they did it notwithstanding. When the good man saw that, he hastily drove a pair of animals of every sort up into the trees, and then he and his family climbed up into a coco-nut tree. Hardly had the wicked men consumed the fish than water burst from the ground with such violence that nobody had time to save himself. Men and animals were all drowned. When the water had mounted to the top of the highest tree, it sank as rapidly as it had risen. Then the good man came down from the tree with his family and laid out new plantations.

The natives of the Mamberano River, in Dutch New Guinea, are reported to tell a story of a great flood, caused by the rising of the river, which overwhelmed Mount Vanessa, and from which only one man and his wife escaped, together with a pig, a cassowary, a kangaroo, and a pigeon. The man and his wife became the ancestors of the present race of men ; the beasts and birds became the ancestors of the existing species. The bones of the drowned animals still lie on Mount Vanessa.

On the subject of deluge legends in New Guinea the following remarks of a judicious and well-informed writer deserve to be borne in mind. "New Guinea," he says, "is the classic land of earthquakes, and ten years never pass without the occurrence somewhere of a tremendous convulsion, such as the sinking of whole districts or the inroad of destructive flood-waves. Thus, for example, the sea is said to have formerly reached to the top of Saddle Mountain. Stories of a flood are therefore common in New Guinea, and have originated in the country itself under the impression of these natural phenomena. Now the Papuan hears the Biblical story of the flood, in which his fancy is particularly taken by the many great animals, of each of which a pair was saved. The terrestrial animals of his own country are hardly worth the saving, and the birds can escape from the flood without the help of man. But since in the Biblical flood large animals were saved, of which pictures are shown to the native, animals which afford much better eating than wretched rats and mice, the black man modifies his own flood legends accordingly.

It cannot surprise us, therefore, that legends with a Biblical colouring already existed in New Guinea when the first mission settled there in 886; for the neighbourhood of the Malay Archipelago, where missionaries had been much longer resident, facilitated the importation of the stories. Besides, a mission had been established in the island of Rook as early as about the middle of the nineteenth century ; and Rook has been in constant communication with the mainland of New Guinea by means of the neighbouring Siassi Islands. The Bismarck Archipelago also, where missionaries have long been at work, deserves to be considered with reference to the importation of Biblical stories into Northern New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) ; for a perpetual intercourse of ideas is kept up between the two countries by the seafaring Siassi and Tami."

The Fijians have a tradition of a great deluge, which they call Walavu-levu : some say that the flood was partial, others that it was universal. The way in which the catastrophe came about was this. The great god Ndengei had a monstrous bird called Turukawa, which used to wake him punctually by its cooing every morning. One day his two grandsons, whether by accident or design, shot the bird dead with their bows and arrows, and buried the carcase in order to conceal the crime. So the deity overslept himself, and being much annoyed at the disappearance of his favourite fowl, he sent out his messenger Uto to look for it everywhere. The search proved fruitless. The messenger reported that not a trace of the bird was to be found. But a second search was more successful, and laid the guilt of the murder at the door of the god's grandsons. To escape the rage of their incensed grandfather the young scapegraces fled to the mountains and there took refuge with a tribe of carpenters, who willingly undertook to build a stockade strong enough to keep Ndengei and all his catchpolls at bay. They were as good as their word, and for three months the god and his minions besieged the fortress in vain. At last, in despair of capturing the stockade by the regular operations of war, the baffled deity disbanded his army and meditated a surer revenge.

At his command the dark clouds gathered and burst, pouring torrents of rain on the doomed earth. Towns, hills, and mountains were submerged one after the other ; yet for long the rebels, secure in the height of their town, looked down with unconcern on the rising tide of waters. At last when the surges lapped their wooden walls and even washed through their fortress, they called for help to a god, who, according to one account, instructed them to form a float out of the fruit of the shaddock; accord-ing to others, he sent two canoes for their use, or taught them how to build a canoe for themselves and thus ensure their own safety. It was Rokoro, the god of carpenters, who with his foreman Rokola came to their rescue. The pair sailed about in two large double canoes, picking up the drowning people and keeping them on board till the flood subsided. Others, however, will have it that the survivors saved themselves in large bowls, in which they floated about. Whatever the minor variations may be in the Fijian legend, all agree that even the highest places were covered by the deluge, and that the remnant of the human race was saved in some kind of vessel, which was at last left high and dry by the receding tide on the island of Mbengha.

The number of persons who thus survived the flood was eight. Two tribes were completely destroyed by the waters ; one of them consisted entirely of women, the members of the other had tails like those of dogs. Because the survivors of the flood landed on their island, the natives of Mbengha claimed to rank highest of all the Fijians, and their chiefs always acted a conspicuous part in Fijian history : they styled themselves "Subject to heaven alone" (Ngali-duva-ki-langi). It is said that formerly the Fijians always kept great canoes ready for use against another flood, and that the custom was only discontinued in modern times.

The Melanesians of the New Hebrides say that their great legendary hero Qat disappeared from the world in a deluge. They show the very place from which he sailed away on his last voyage. It is a broad lake in the centre of the island of Gaua. In the days of Qat the ground now occupied by the lake was a spacious plain clothed with forest. Qat felled one of the tallest trees in the wood and proceeded to build himself a canoe out of the fallen trunk. While he was at work on it, his brothers would come and jeer at him, as he sat or stood there sweating away at his unfinished canoe in the shadow of the dense tropical forest. "How will you ever get that huge canoe through the thick woods to the sea?" they asked him mockingly. "Wait and see," was all he deigned to answer.

When the canoe was finished, he gathered into it his wife and his brothers and all the living creatures of the island, down to the smallest ants, and shut himself and them into the vessel, which he provided with a covering. Then came a deluge of rain ; the great hollow of the island was filled with water, which burst through the circle of the hills at the spot where the great waterfall of Gaua still descends seaward, with a thunderous roar, in a veil of spray. There the canoe swept on the rushing water through the barrier of the hills, and driving away out to sea was lost to view. The natives say that the hero Qat took away the best of everything with him when he thus vanished from sight, and still they look forward to his joyful return. When Bishop Patteson and his companions first landed on Mota, the happy natives took him for the long-lost Qat and his brethren. And some years afterwards, when a small trading vessel was one day seen standing in for the island of Gaua and making apparently for the channel down which the water of the great cascade flows to mingle with the sea, the old people on the island cried out joyfully that Qat was come again, and that his canoe knew her own way home. But alas! the ship was cast away on the reef, and Qat has not yet come home

Stories of a Great Flood in Polynesia and Micronesia

Legends of a great flood in which a multitude of people perished are told by the natives of those groups of islands which under the general names of Polynesia and Micronesia are scattered widely over the Pacific. "The principal facts," we are told, "are the same in the traditions prevailing among the inhabitants of the different groups, although they differ in several minor particulars. In one group the accounts state, that in ancient times Taaroa, the principal god (according to their mythology, the creator of the world), being angry with men on account of their disobedience to his will, overturned the world into the sea, when the earth sank in the waters, excepting a few aurus, or projecting points, which, remaining above its surface, constituted the principal cluster of islands. The memorial preserved by the inhabitants of Eimeo states, that after the inundation of the land, when the water subsided, a man landed from a canoe near Tiataepua, in their island, and erected an altar, or marae, in honour of his god."

In Tahiti the legend ran as follows Tahiti was destroyed by the sea : no man, nor hog, nor fowl, nor dog survived. The groves of trees and the stones were carried away by the wind They were destroyed, and the deep was over the land. But two persons, a husband and a wife, were saved When the flood came, the wife took up her young chicken, her young dog, and her kitten ; the husband took up his young pig [These were all the animals formerly known to the natives; and as the term fanaua, 'young,' is both singular and plural, it may apply to one or more than one chicken, etc.]. The husband proposed that they should take refuge on Mount Orofena, a high mountain in Tahiti, saying that it was lofty and would not be reached by the sea.

But his wife said that the sea would reach to Mount Orofena, and that they had better go to Mount O Pitohito, where they would be safe from the flood So to Mount O Pitohito they went; and she was right, for Orofena was overwhelmed by the sea, but O Pitohito rose above the waste of waters and became their abode. There they watched ten nights, till the sea ebbed, and they saw the little heads of the mountains appearing above the waves.

When the sea retired, the land remained without produce, without man, and the fish were putrid in the caves and holes of the rocks. They said, " Dig a hole for the fish in the sea." The wind also died away, and when all was calm, the stones and the trees began to fall from the heavens, to which they had been carried up by the wind. For all the trees of the land had been torn up and whirled aloft by the hurricane. The two looked about, and the woman said, "We two are safe from the sea, but death, or hurt, comes now in these stones that are falling. Where shall we abide?" So the two dug a hole, lined it with grass, and covered it over with stones and earth. Then they crept into the hole, and sitting there they heard with terror the roar and crash of the stones falling down from the sky. By and by the rain of stones abated, till only a few stones fell at intervals, and then they dropped one by one, and finally ceased altogether. The woman said, "Arise, go out, and see whether the stones are still falling." But her husband said, "Nay, I go not out, lest I die."

A day and a night he waited, and in the morning he said, "The wind is truly dead, and the stones and the trunks of trees cease to fall, neither is there the sound of the stones." They went out, and like a small mountain was the heap of fallen stones and tree trunks. Of the land there remained the earth and the rocks, but the shrubs were destroyed by the sea. They descended from the mountain, and gazed with astonishment: there were no houses, nor coco-nuts, nor palm-trees, nor bread-fruit, nor hibiscus, nor grass : all was destroyed by the sea. The two dwelt together. The woman brought forth two children ; one was a son, the other a daughter. They grieved that there was no food for their children. Again the mother brought forth, but still there was no food ; then the breadfruit bore fruit, and the coco-nut, and every other kind of food. In three days the land was covered with food ; and in time it swarmed with men also, for from those two persons, the father and the mother, all the people are descended.

In Raiatea, one of the Leeward Islands in the Tahitian group, tradition ran that shortly after the peopling of the world by the descendants of Taata, the sea-god Ruahatu was reposing among groves of coral in the depths of ocean, when his repose was rudely interrupted. A fisherman, paddling his canoe overhead, in ignorance or forgetfulness of the divine presence, let down his hooks among the branching corals at the bottom of the clear translucent water, and they became entangled in the hair of the sleeping god.

With great difficulty the fisherman wrenched the hooks out of the ambrosial locks and began pulling them up hand-overhand But the god, enraged at being disturbed in his nap, came also bubbling up to the surface, and popping his head out of the water upbraided the fisherman for his impiety, and threatened in revenge to destroy the land The affrighted fisherman prostrated himself before the sea-god, confessed his sin, and implored his forgiveness, beseeching that the judgment denounced might be averted, or at least that he himself might escape. Moved by his penitence and importunity, Ruahatu bade him return home for his wife and child and go with them to Toamarama, a small island situated within the reefs on the eastern side of Raiatea. There he was promised security amid the destruction of the surrounding islands. The man hastened home, and taking with him his wife and child he repaired to the little isle of refuge in the lagoon.

Some say that he took with him also a friend, who was living under his roof, together with a dog, a pig, and a pair of fowls; so that the refugees numbered four souls, together with the only domesticated animals which were then known in the islands They reached the harbour of refuge before the close of day, and as the sun set the waters of the ocean began to rise, and the inhabitants of the adjacent shore left their dwellings and fled to the mountains All that night the waters rose, and next morning only the tops of the high mountains appeared above the widespread sea Even these were at last covered, and all the inhabitants of the land perished Afterwards the waters retired, the fisherman and his companions left their retreat, took up their abode on the mainland, and became the progenitors of the present inhabitants.

The coral islet in which these forefathers of the race found refuge from the great flood is not more than two feet at the highest above the level of the sea, so that it is difficult to understand how it could have escaped the inundation, while the lofty mountains which tower up thousands of feet from the adjacent shore were submerged. This difficulty, however, presents no stumbling-block to the faith of the natives ; they usually decline to discuss such sceptical doubts, and point triumphantly for confirmation of their story to the coral, shells, and other marine substances which are occasionally found near the surface of the ground on the tops of their highest mountains. These must, they insist, have been deposited there by the waters of the ocean when the islands were submerged

It is significant, as we shall see later on, that in these Tahitian legends the flood is ascribed solely to the rising of the sea, and not at all to heavy rain, which is not even mentioned. On this point the Rev. William Ellis, to whom we owe the record of these legends, makes the following observations : "I have frequently conversed with the people on the subject, both in the northern and southern groups, but could never learn that they had any accounts of the windows of heaven having been opened, or the rain having descended. In the legend of Ruahatu, the Toamarama of Tahiti, and the Kai of Kahinarii in Hawaii, the inundation is ascribed to the rising of the waters of the sea. In each account, the anger of the god is considered as the cause of the inundation of the world, and the destruction of its inhabitants."

When Mr. Ellis preached in the year 8 to the natives of Hawaii on the subject of Noah's deluge, they told him of a similar legend which had been handed down among them. "They said they were informed by their fathers, that all the land had once been overflowed by the sea, except a small peak on the top of Mouna-Kea, where two human beings were preserved from the destruction that overtook the rest, but they said they had never before heard of a ship, or of Noah, having been always accustomed to call it kai a Kahinárii (sea of Kahinárii)."

A somewhat later version of the Hawaiian legend runs thus. "A tradition of the flood likewise exists, which states that all the land, except the summit of Mauna-kea, was overflowed by copious rains and risings of the waters. Some of the inhabitants preserved themselves in a canoe, which finally rested upon that mountain ; after which the waters fell, and the people went forth, and again dwelt in the land. This flood is called Kaiakahnialii, the great deluge of Hinalii." In this later version there are two not unimportant variations from the earlier. First, the deluge is said to have been partly caused by rain, whereas in the earlier version there is no mention of rain, and in it the flood is attributed to the rising of the sea alone. Second, in the later version the survivors are reported to have saved themselves in a canoe, whereas in the earlier version no canoe is mentioned, the survivors being merely said to have escaped to the mountain. In both points the later version agrees with the Biblical legend and has probably been influenced by it.

Mangaia, one of the Hervey Group, is an island which rises from deep water as a ring of live coral. The unbroken reef which surrounds it is covered by the sea at half tide. Inward from this ring of live coral rises a second ring of dead coral, from one to two miles wide, which falls away perpendicularly on the landward side, thus forming a sort of cyclopean wall which runs right round the island. The interior of the island is composed of dark volcanic rock and red clay, which descend in low hills from a flat-topped centre known as the Crown of Mangaia. There is no lagoon. The streams, after fertilizing thousands of taro plantations, find their way to the sea by subterranean channels through the inner ring of dead coral Such is Mangaia at the present time. But the natives say that it was not always so. Originally, if we may believe them, the surface of the island was everywhere a gentle uniform slope from the centre to the sea without a single hollow or valley. The process by which the island was transformed into the present shape is said to have been as follows.

Aokeu, a son of Echo, disputed warmly with Ake who should perform the most wonderful thing. Ake's home is the ocean, and his constant employment is to tread down its flooring; thus he ever deepens its vast basin, and enables it to hold more of his favourite element. Ake was confident that he could easily beat Aokeu, who was ignobly born of the continual drippings of purest water from the stalactite roof of a narrow cavern. His name means "Red Circle," and he is so called because after heavy rains the water washes down the red clay and tinges the ocean round the island with a crimson band.

To make sure of success Ake summoned to his help Raka, the god of the winds, who drove a fearful hurricane over sea and land, as if he would bury the island in the depths. The two twin children of the blustering storm-god also lent their aid. One of them, Tikokura, is seen in the line of huge curling, foaming billows, which break in thunder on the reef, threatening to dash the solid coral itself into shivers. The other twin-child of the wind-god is Tane-ere-tue; he manifests himself in the great storm-wave, which is rarely seen, but never without striking terror into the beholder. On rushed these mighty monsters, secure of victory. They swamped the rocks near the sea to the height of a hundred feet above the level of the sea. In proof of it you may see to this day numberless clam and other shells, as well as "coral-borers" (ungakoa) imbedded in the solid rock, which is burrowed and worn, even at its highest points, into a thousand fantastic shapes by the action of the sea.

Meantime, Aokeu on his side had not been idle. He caused the rain—his favourite element—to fall in sheets for five days and nights without intermission. The red clay and small stones were washed down into the ocean, discolouring its waters a long way from the land. On every side the channels deepened until the narrow valleys were formed; but still the wind howled and the rain poured incessantly, till the deep valleys, walled in on the seaward side by perpendicular rocks, where the principal taro-grounds may now be seen, gradually assumed their present dimensions. The flat summit of the central hill, Rangimotia, the Crown of Mangaia, alone rose above the water, to mark the original height of the island.

At the outset, Rangi, the first ruler of Mangaia, had been warned of the desperate strife of the elements which was about to take place ; and, with his few people, awaited at Rangimotia the issue of the contest. With deep concern he saw on the one hand the wild ocean covering the belt of rocks which surrounds the island, and, on the other hand, a vast lake of fresh water rising rapidly and rushing tumultuously to meet the advancing ocean. Everywhere an immense expanse of water met the eye of Rangi, save only the long narrow strip of level soil upon which he and his people tremblingly stood. Already the rising tide lapped their feet. What if it should rise a little higher? Rangi resolved to appeal to the great god Rongo to save him and his beloved island from destruction. To reach the temple (marae) of the god, which faced the rising sun, Rangi had to wade through the waters, which reached to his chin, along a ridge of hills to a point called Teunu, lying due east. Just there is a spot called "the standing-place of Rongo," because that god hearkened to his grandson's prayer, and looking at the war of waters—the flood from the land meeting and battling with the flood from the sea—he cried, "It is enough (A tira)!" The eye of Vatea, the Sun, opened at the same moment above the scene of conflict; the god saw and pitied mankind. Then the sea sullenly sank to its former level: the rain ceased to fall: the waters of the interior were drained away; and the island assumed its present agreeable diversity of hill and vale. Hence the proud title of the high god of Mangaia, "Rongo, the warder-off of mad billows" (Rongo arai kea).

Mankind were saved, and the land became better adapted than ever to their abode. Aokeu, lord of rain, was acknowledged victor ; for the ocean had expended its fury in vain on the rocky heights near the sea, they still stood firm, and in vain had the twin-sons of the wind-god sought to storm the heights of the island. But the turbid floods, rushing down from the hills, flowed far away into the ocean, everywhere marking their triumphant progress with the red clay of the mountains of Mangaia. So real was this war of the elements to the men of former days that they disputed as to the route which Rangi took in wading through the flood to the temple of Rongo, some holding that he took the straight road, others that he followed a more circuitous path to avoid a dip in the hills.

This story of a great flood is interesting, because it appears to be a simple myth invented to explain the peculiar physical features of the island. Had the writer who records the tale not also described the aspect of the island, with which he was familiar, we should probably have failed to perceive the purely local origin of the story, and might have been tempted to derive it from some distant source, perhaps even to find in it a confused reminiscence of Noah and the ark. It is allowable to conjecture that many other stories of a great flood could similarly be resolved into merely local myths, if we were better acquainted with those natural features of the country which the tales were invented to explain.

A somewhat different story of a great flood is told in Rakaanga, an outlying island of the Hervey Group. They say that once on a time a certain chief named Taoiau was greatly incensed with his people for not bringing him the sacred turtle. So in his wrath he roused all the mighty sea-gods, on whose good-will the islands depend for their existence. Amongst them in particular was one who sleeps at the bottom of mid-ocean, but who on that occasion, moved by the king's prayer, stood up in anger like a vast upright stone. A dreadful hurricane burst forth ; the ocean rose and swept over the whole island of Rakaanga. The few inhabitants of those days escaped destruction by taking refuge on a mound, which was pointed out to the missionary who has recorded the tale. There was no mountain to which they could fly for safety, since the island is a low atoll covered with forests of coco-nut palms. The memorable event was long known as "the overwhelming of Taoiau."

In Samoa it is, or used to be, a universal belief that of old the fish swam where the land now is ; and tradition adds that when the waters abated, many of the fish of the sea were left on the land and were afterwards changed into stones. Hence, they say, in the bush and on the mountains there are stones in plenty which were once sharks and other inhabitants of the deep According to another Samoan tradition the only survivor of the deluge was a certain Pili, who was either a man or a lizard, and by marriage with a bird, the stormy petrel, begat offspring whose names are recorded. The natives of Nanumanga or Hudson's Island, in the South Pacific, also tell of a deluge, and how it was dispelled by the sea-serpent, who, as a woman, married the earth as a man, and by him became the ancestress of the present race of mortals The Maoris of New Zealand have a long legend of the deluge. They say that when men multiplied on the earth and there were many great tribes, evil prevailed everywhere, the tribes quarrelled and made war on each other. The worship of the great god Tane, who had created man and woman, was neglected and his doctrines openly denied.

Two great prophets, indeed, there were who taught the true doctrine concerning the separation of heaven and earth, but men scoffed at them, saying that they were false teachers and that heaven and earth had been from the beginning just as we see them now. The names of these two wise prophets were Para-whenua-mea and Tupu-nui-a-uta. They continued to preach till the tribes cursed them, saying, "You two can eat the words of your history as food for you, and you can eat the heads of the words of that history." That grieved the prophets, when men said the wicked words "Eat the heads," and they grew angry. So they took their stone axes and cut down trees, and dragged the trunks to the source of the Tohinga River, and bound them together with vines and ropes, and made a very wide raft. Moreover, they built a house on the raft, and put much food in it, fern-root, and sweet potatoes, and dogs. Then they recited incantations and prayed that rain might descend in such abundance as would convince men of the existence and power of the god Tane, and would teach them the need of worship for life and for peace.

After that the two prophets embarked on the raft, along with two men called Tiu and Reti and a woman named Wai-puna-hau. But there were other women also on the raft. Now Tiu was the priest on the raft, and he prayed and uttered incantations for rain. So it rained in torrents for four or five days, and then the priest repeated incantations to make the rain cease, and it ceased. But still the flood rose; next day it reached the settlement, and on the following day the raft was lifted up by the waters, and floated down the River Tohinga. Great as a sea was now the inundation, and the raft drifted to and fro on the face of the waters. When they had tossed about for seven moons, the priest Tiu said to his companions, "We shall not die, we shall land on the earth" ; and in the eighth month he said moreover, "The sea has become thin ; the flood has begun to subside." The two prophets asked him, " By what do you know?" He answered, "By the signs of my staff." For he had kept his altar on one side of the deck, and there he performed his ceremonies, and repeated his incantations, and observed his staff. And he understood the signs of his staff, and he said again to his companions, "The blustering winds of the past moons have fallen, the winds of this month have died away, and the sea is calm." In the eighth month the raft no longer rolled as before ; it now pitched as well as rolled, so the priest knew that the sea was shallow, and that they were drawing near to land. He said to his companions, "This is the moon in which we shall land on dry earth, for by the signs of my staff I know that the sea is becoming less deep."

All the while they floated on the deep they repeated incantations and performed ceremonies in honour of the god Tane. At last they landed on dry earth at Hawaiki. They thought that they might find some of the inhabitants of the world still alive, and that the earth would look as it had looked before the flood. But all was changed. The earth was cracked and fissured in some places, and in others it had been turned upside down and confounded by reason of the flood. And not one soul was left alive in the world. They who came forth from the raft were the solitary survivors of all the tribes of the earth. When they landed, the first thing they did was to perform ceremonies and repeat incantations. They worshipped Tane, and the Heaven (Rangi), and Rehua, and all the gods; and as they worshipped them they offered them seaweed, a length of the priest's two thumbs for each god. Each god was worshipped in a different place, and for each there was an altar, where the incantations were recited. The altar was a root of grass, a shrub, a tree, or a flax-bush.

These were the altars of the gods at that time ; and now, if any of the people of the tribes go near to such altars, the food they have eaten in their stomachs will swell and kill them. The chief Priest alone may go to such holy spots. If common folk were to go to these sacred places and afterwards cook food in their village, the food would kill all who ate it. It would be cursed by the sin of the people in desecrating the sanctity of the altars, and the punishment of the eaters would be death. When the persons who were saved on the raft had performed all the ceremonies needful for removing the taboo under which they laboured, they procured fire by friction at one of the sacred places. And with the fire the priest kindled bundles of grass, and he put a bundle of burning grass on each altar beside the piece destined for the god ; and the priests presented the seaweed to the gods as a thank-offering for the rescue of the people from the flood and for the preservation of their lives on the raft.

Other Maori stories of a great flood associate the catastrophe with a certain legendary hero called Tawhaki. They say that once upon a time two of his brothers-in-law attacked and wounded him and left him for dead. But he recovered from his wounds and quitted the place where his wicked brothers-in-law lived. Away he went with all his own warriors and their families, and he built a fortified village upon the top of a very lofty mountain, where he could easily defend himself, and there they all dwelt secure. " Then he called aloud to the gods, his ancestors, for revenge, and they let the floods of heaven descend, and the earth was overwhelmed by the waters and all human beings perished, and the name given to that event was ' The overwhelming of the Mataaho,' and the whole of that race perished." Some say that Tawhaki was a man, who went up to the top of a mountain, and, having there transfigured himself by putting off his earthly raiment and put on a garment of lightning, was worshipped as a god, and all the tribes chanted incantations and offered sacrifices to him. In his divine character he once, in a fit of anger, stamped on the floor of heaven, so that it cracked and the celestial waters burst through and flooded the earth. Others say that it was Tawhaki's mother who caused the deluge by weeping so copiously that her tears, falling on the earth, inundated it and drowned all men.

In Micronesia as well as Polynesia the story of a great flood has been recorded. The Pelew Islanders say that once on a time a man went up into the sky, whence the gods with their shining eyes, which are the stars, look down every night upon the earth. The cunning fellow stole one of these bright eyes and brought it home with him, and all the money of the Pelew Islanders has been made out of that starry eye ever since. But the gods were very angry at the theft, and down they came to earth to reclaim their stolen property and to punish the thief. They disguised themselves in the likeness of ordinary men, and begged for food and lodging from door to door. But men were churlish and turned them away without a bite or a sup. Only one old woman received them kindly in her cottage, and set before them the best she had to eat and drink. So when they went away they warned the old woman to make a raft of bamboo ready against the next full moon, and when the night of the full moon came she was to lie down on the raft and sleep. She did as she was bidden. Now with the full moon came a dreadful storm and rain, and the sea rose higher and higher, and flooded the islands, rent the mountains, and destroyed the abodes of men ; and people knew not how to save themselves, and they all perished in the rising flood.

But the good old dame, fast asleep on the raft, was borne on the face of the waters and drifted till her hair caught in the boughs of a tree on the top of Mount Armlimui. There she lay, while the flood ebbed and the water sank lower and lower down the sides of the mountain. Then the gods came down from the sky to seek for the good old woman whom they had taken under their protection, but they found her dead. So they summoned one of their women-folk from heaven, and she entered into the dead body of the old woman and made her live. After that the gods begat five children by the resuscitated old wife, and having done so they left the earth and returned to heaven ; the goddess who had kindly reanimated the corpse the ancient dame also went back to her mansion in the sky. But the five children of the divine fathers and the human mother repeopled the Pelew Islands, and from them the present inhabitants are descended

Stories of a Great Flood in South America

At the time of their discovery the Indians of Brazil, in the neighbourhood of what was afterwards Rio de Janeiro, had a legend of a universal deluge in which only two brothers with their wives were saved. According to one account, the flood covered the whole earth and all men perished except the ancestors of those Indians, who escaped by climbing up into high trees ; others, however, thought that the survivors were saved in a canoe.

As reported by the Frenchman André Thevet, who travelled in Brazil about the middle of the sixteenth century, the story related by the Indians about Cape Frio ran thus. A certain great medicine-man, by name Sommay, had two sons called Tamendonare and Ariconte. Tamendonare tilled the ground and was a good father and husband, and he had a wife and children. But his brother Ariconte cared for none of these things. He busied himself only with war, and his one desire was to subdue neighbouring peoples and even his own righteous brother.

One day this truculent warrior, returning from a battle, brought to his peaceful brother the amputated arm of a slain foe, and as he did so he said proudly to his brother, " Away with you, coward that you are. I'll have your wife and children, for you are not strong enough to defend them." The good man, grieved at his brother's pride, answered with stinging sarcasm, " If you are as valiant as you say, why did not you bring the whole carcass of your enemy ?" Indignant at the taunt, Ariconte threw the arm at the door of his brother's house. At the same moment the village in which they dwelt was transported to the sky, but the two brothers remained on earth. Seeing that, in astonishment or anger Tamendonare stamped on the ground so forcibly that a great fountain of water sprang from it and rose so high that it out-topped the hills and seemed to mount above the clouds ; and the water continued to spout till it had covered the whole earth. On perceiving their danger, the two brothers hastened to ascend the highest mountains, and there sought to save themselves by climbing the trees, along with their wives.

Tamendonare climbed one tree, called pindona, of which the French traveller saw two sorts, one of them with larger fruit and leaves than the other. In his flight from the rising flood he dragged up one of his wives with him, while his brother with his wife climbed another tree called geniper. While they were all perched among the boughs, Ariconte gave some of the fruit of the tree to his wife, saying, " Break off some of the fruit and let it fall." She did so, and they perceived by the splash that the water was still high, and that it was not yet time for them to descend into the valley. The Indians believe that in this flood all men and women were drowned, except the two brothers and their wives, and that from these two pairs after the deluge there came forth two different peoples, to wit, the Tonnasseares, surnamed Tupinambo, and the Tonnaitz Hoyanans, surnamed Tominu, who are at perpetual feud and war with each other. The Tupinambo, wishing to exalt themselves and to make themselves out better than their fellows and neighbours, say, " We are descended from Tamendonare, while you are descended from Ariconte," by which they imply that Tamendonare was a better man than Ariconte

A somewhat different version of the same legend was recorded by the Jesuit Simon de Vasconcellos.

In it only a single family is said to have been saved, and no mention is made of the bad brother. Once upon a time, so runs the tale, there was a clever medicine-man or sorcerer named Tamanduare. To him the great god Tupi revealed the coming of a great flood which would swamp the earth, so that even the high trees and mountains would be submerged. Only one lofty peak would rise above the waters, and on its top would be found a tall palm-tree with a fruit like a coco-nut. To that palm the sorcerer was warned to turn for refuge with his family in the hour of need. Without delay Tamanduare and his family betook themselves to the top of the lofty peak. When they were safely there, it began to rain, and it rained and rained till all the earth was covered. The flood even crept up the mountain and washed over the summit, and the man and his family climbed up into the palm-tree and remained in the branches so long as the inundation lasted, and they subsisted by eating the fruit of the palm. When the water subsided, they descended, and being fruitful they proceeded to repeople the drowned and devastated world.

The Caingangs, or Coroados, an Indian tribe of Rio Grande do Sul, the most southerly province of Brazil, have a tradition of a great flood which covered the whole earth inhabited by their forefathers. Only the top of the coastal range called Serra do Mar still appeared above the water. The members of three Indian tribes, namely the Caingangs, the Cayurucres, and the Cames, swam on the water of the flood toward the mountains, holding lighted torches between their teeth. But the Cayurucres and the Cames grew weary, they sank under the waves and were drowned, and their souls went to dwell in the heart of the mountain. However, the Caingangs and a few of the Curutons made shift to reach the mountain, and there they abode, some on the ground, and some on the branches of trees. Several days passed, and yet the water did not sink, and they had no food to eat.

They looked for nothing but death, when they heard the song of the saracuras, a species of waterfowl, which flew to them with baskets of earth. This earth the birds threw into the water, which accordingly began slowly to sink. The people cried to the birds to hurry, so the birds called the ducks to their help, and working together they soon cleared enough room and to spare for all the people, except for such as had climbed up the trees : these latter were turned into monkeys. When the flood subsided, the Caingangs descended and settled at the foot of the mountain. The souls of the drowned Cayurucres and Cames contrived to burrow their way out from the bowels of the mountain in which they were imprisoned ; and when they had crept forth they kindled a fire, and out of the ashes of the fire one of the Cayurucres moulded jaguars, and tapirs, and ant-bears, and bees, and animals of many other sorts, and he made them live and told them what they should eat. But one of the Cames imitated him by fashioning pumas, and poisonous snakes, and wasps, all in order that these creatures should fight the other animals which the Cayurucres had made, as they do to this day.

A story of a great flood is told also by the Carayas, a tribe of Brazilian Indians, who inhabit the valley of the Araguaya River, which, with the Tocantins, forms the most easterly of the great southern tributaries of the Amazon. The tribe is said to differ from all its neighbours in manners and customs as well as in physical characteristics, while its language appears to be unrelated to any other known language spoken by the Indians of Brazil The Caraya story of a deluge runs thus. Once upon a time the Carayas were out hunting wild pigs and drove the animals into their dens. Thereupon they began to dig them out, killing each pig as it was dragged forth. In doing so they came upon a deer, then a tapir, and then a white deer. Digging still deeper, they laid bare the feet of a man. Horrified at the discovery, they fetched a mighty magician, who knew all the beasts of the forest, and he contrived to draw the man out of the earth. The man thus unearthed was named Anatiua, and he had a thin body but a fat paunch. He now began to sing, " I am Anatiua Bring me tobacco to smoke."

But the Carayas did not understand what he said They ran about the wood, and came back with all kinds of flowers and fruits, which they offered to Anatiua But he refused them all, and pointed to a man who was smoking Then they understood him and offered him tobacco He took it and smoked till he fell to the ground senseless.

So they carried him to the canoe and brought him to the village. There he awoke from his stupor and began to dance and sing But his behaviour and his unintelligible speech frightened the Carayas, and they decamped, bag and baggage That made Anatiua very angry, and he turned himself into a great piranha and followed them, carrying with him many calabashes full of water He called to the Carayas to halt, but they paid no heed, and in his rage he smashed one of the calabashes which he was carrying.

The water at once began to rise, but still the Carayas pursued their flight Then he broke another calabash, and then another and another, and higher and higher rose the water, till the whole land was inundated, and only the mountains at the mouth of Tapirape River projected above the flood The Carayas took refuge on the two peaks of that range Anatiua now called all fish together to drag the people down into the water The jaku, the pintado, and the pacu tried to do so, but none of them succeeded At last the bicudo (a fish with a long beak-like snout) contrived to scale the mountain from behind and to tear the Carayas down from its summit A great lagoon still marks the spot where they fell Only a few persons remained on the top of the mountain, and they descended when the water of the flood had run away

On this story the writer who records it remarks that " though in general regularly recurring inundations, as on the Araguaya, do not give rise to flood stories, as Andree has rightly pointed out, yet the local conditions are here favourable to the creation of such a story. The traveller, who, after a long voyage between endless low river-banks, suddenly comes in sight of the mighty conical mountains on the Tapirape River, tower-ing abruptly from the plain, can easily understand how the Carayas, who suffer much from inundations, came to tell their story of the flood. Perhaps on some occasion when the inundation rose to an unusual height, these mountains may really have served as a last refuge to the inhabitants of the surrounding district." And he adds, " As in most South American legends of a flood, this particular flood is said to have been caused, not by rain, but by the breaking of vessels full of water."

The Ipurina, a warlike tribe on the Purus River, one of the great rivers which flow into the Upper Amazon from the south, tell of a destructive deluge of hot water. They say that formerly there was a great kettle of boiling water in the sun. About it perched or fluttered a countless flock of storks. Some of the birds flew over the world collecting everything that mouldered or decayed to throw it into the kettle. Only the hard, indestructible parukuba wood they left alone. The storks surrounded the kettle and waited till something appeared on the surface of the boiling water, whereupon they snapped it up. Now the chief of the storks, indeed the creator of all birds, was Mayuruberu. When the water in the kettle was getting low, he cast a round stone into it. The kettle was upset, the hot liquid poured down on earth and burned everything up, including the woods and even the water. Mankind indeed survived, but of the vegetable world nothing escaped but the cassia.

The ancestor of the Ipurina was the sloth. He climbed the cassia-tree to fetch down the fruits, for men had nothing else to subsist upon. On earth it was very dark, for the sun and moon were hidden. The sloth plucked the fruit and threw down the kernels. The first kernel fell on hard earth, the second in water, the third in deep water, and so on. At the fall of the first kernel, the sun appeared again but still very small, hardly an inch across ; at the fall of the second, it was larger ; at the fall of the third, it measured a span across; and so on until it expanded to its present dimensions. Next the sloth begged Mayuruberu to give him seeds of useful fruits. So Mayuruberu appeared with a great basketful of plants, and the Ipurina began to till their fields. He who would not work was eaten by Mayuruberu. Every day Mayuruberu received a man to devour. Thus the world gradually became such as it is at the present time. The kettle still stands in the sun, but it is empty

Again, the Pamarys, Abederys, and Kataushys, on the river Purus, relate that once on a time people heard a rumbling above and below the ground The sun and moon, also, turned red, blue, and yellow, and the wild beasts mingled fearlessly with men A month later they heard a roar and saw darkness ascending from the earth to the sky, accompanied by thunder and heavy rain, which blotted out the day and the earth.

Some people lost themselves, some died, without knowing why ; for everything was in a dreadful state of confusion The water rose very high, till the earth was sunk beneath the water and only the branches of the highest trees still stood out above the flood Thither the people had fled for refuge, and there, perched among the boughs, they perished of cold and hunger ; for all the time it was dark and the rain fell. Then only Uassu and his wife were saved When they came down after the flood they could not find a single corpse, no, not so much as a heap of bleached bones.

After that they had many children, and they said one to the other, " Go to, let us build our houses on the river, that when the water rises, we too may rise with it." But when they saw that the land was dry and solid, they thought no more about it. Yet the Pamarys build their houses on the river to this day. The Jibaros, an Indian tribe on the upper waters of the Amazon, in the territories of Peru and Ecuador, have also a tradition, more or less confused, of a great deluge which happened long ago. They say that a great cloud fell from heaven, which turned into rain and caused the death of all the inhabitants of the earth ; only an old man and his two sons were saved, and it was they who repeopled the earth after the deluge, though how they contrived to do so without the assistance of a woman is a detail about which our authority does not deign to enlighten us. However that may be, one of the two sons who survived was cursed by his father, and the Jibaros are descended from him.

The curse may be a reminiscence of the story of Noah and his sons recorded in Genesis, of which the Jibaros may have heard through missionaries. The difficulty of propagating the human species without the help of the female sex would seem to have struck the acuter minds among the Jibaros, for according to some of them the survivors of the deluge were a man and a woman, who took refuge in a cave on a high mountain, together with samples of all the various species of the animal kingdom. This version provides, with commendable foresight, for the restoration of animals as well as of men after the great flood. Yet another version of the story told by the Jibaros solves the problem of population in a more original manner. Nobody, they say, escaped the flood but two brothers, who found refuge in a mountain which, strange to tell, rose higher and higher with the rise of the waters. When the flood had subsided, the two brothers went out to search for food, and on their return to the hut what was their surprise to find victuals set forth ready for them ! To clear up the mystery, one of the brothers hid himself, and from his place of concealment he saw two parrots with the faces of women enter the hut and prepare the meal.

Darting out from his ambush he seized one of the birds and married it or her, and from this marriage sprang three boys and three girls, who became the ancestors of the Jibaros.

The Muratos, a branch of the Jibaros in Ecuador, have their own version of the deluge story. They say that once on a time a Murato Indian went to fish in a lagoon of the Pastaza River ; a small crocodile swallowed his bait, and the fisherman killed the young animal. The crocodile's mother, or rather the mother of crocodiles in general, was angry and lashed the water with her tail, till the water overflowed and flooded all the neighbourhood of the lagoon. All the people were drowned except one man, who climbed a palm-tree and stayed there for many days. All the time it was as dark as night. From time to time he dropped a fruit of the palm, but he always heard it splash in the water. At last one day the fruit which he let fall dropped with a simple thud on the ground ; there was no splash, so he knew that the flood had subsided. Accordingly he descended from the tree, built a house, and set about to till a field. He was without a wife, but he soon provided himself with one by cutting off a piece of his own body and planting it in the ground ; for from the earth thus fertilized there sprang up a woman, whom he married.

The incident of a moving mountain, which meets us in the Jibaro story of the flood, recurs in another Indian narrative of the great catastrophe. The Araucanians of Chili have a tradition of a great deluge, in which only a few persons were saved. These fortunate survivors took refuge on a high mountain called Thegtheg, the thundering, or the sparkling, which had three points and possessed the property of floating on water. " From hence," says the Spanish historian, " it is inferable that this deluge was in consequence of some volcanic eruption, accompanied by terrible earthquakes, and is probably very different from that of Noah. Whenever a violent earthquake occurs, these people fly for safety to those mountains which they fancy to be of a similar appearance, and which of course, as they suppose, must possess the same property of floating on the water, assigning as a reason, that they are fearful after an earthquake that the sea will again return and deluge the world. On these occasions, each one takes a good supply of provisions, and wooden plates to protect their heads from being scorched, provided the Thegtheg, when raised by the waters, should be elevated to the sun. Whenever they are told that plates made of earth would be much more suitable for this purpose than those of wood, which are liable to be burned, their usual reply is, that their ancestors did so before them."

The Ackawois of British Guiana tell a story of the great flood which is enriched by a variety of details They say that in the beginning of the world the great spirit Makonaima created birds and beasts and set his son Sigu to rule over them Moreover, he caused to spring from the earth a great and very wonderful tree, which bore a different kind of fruit on each of its branches, while round its trunk bananas, plantains, cassava, maize, and corn of all kinds grew in profusion ; yams, too, clustered round its roots ; and in short all the plants now cultivated on earth flourished in the greatest abundance on or about or under that marvellous tree In order to diffuse the benefits of the tree all over the world, Sigu resolved to cut it down and plant slips and seeds of it everywhere, and this he did with the help of all the beasts and birds, all except the brown monkey, who, being both lazy and mischievous, refused to assist in the great work of transplantation.

So to keep him out of mischief Sigu set the animal to fetch water from the stream in a basket of open-work, calculating that the task would occupy his misdirected energies for some time to come. In the meantime, proceeding with the labour of felling the miraculous tree, he discovered that the stump was hollow and full of water in which the fry of every sort of fresh-water fish was swimming about.

The benevolent Sigu determined to stock all the rivers and lakes on earth with the fry on so liberal a scale that every sort of fish should swarm in every water But this generous intention was unexpectedly frustrated For the water in the cavity, being connected with the great reservoir somewhere in the bowels of the earth, began to overflow; and to arrest the rising flood Sigu covered the stump with a closely woven basket This had the desired effect But unfortunately the brown monkey, tired of his fruitless task, stealthily returned, and his curiosity being aroused by the sight of the basket turned upside down, he imagined that it must conceal something good to eat. So he cautiously lifted it and peeped beneath, and out poured the flood, sweeping the monkey himself away and inundating the whole land. Gathering the rest of the animals together Sigu led them to the highest point of the country, where grew some tall coco-nut palms. Up the tallest of these trees he caused the birds and climbing animals to ascend ; and as for the animals that could not climb and were not amphibious, he shut them up in a cave with a very narrow entrance, and having sealed up the mouth of it with wax he gave the animals inside a long thorn with which to pierce the wax and so ascertain when the water had subsided. After taking these measures for the preservation of the more helpless species, he and the rest of the creatures climbed up the palm-tree and ensconced themselves among the branches.

During the darkness and storm which followed, they all suffered intensely from cold and hunger ; the rest bore their sufferings with stoical fortitude, but the red howling monkey uttered his anguish in such horrible yells that his throat swelled and has remained distended ever since ; that, too, is the reason why to this day he has a sort of bony drum in his throat.

Meanwhile Sigu from time to time let fall seeds of the palm into the water to judge of its depth by the splash. As the water sank, the interval between the dropping of the seed and the splash in the water grew longer; and at last, instead of a splash, the listening Sigu heard the dull thud of the seeds striking the soft earth. Then he knew that the flood had subsided, and he and the animals prepared to descend. But the trumpeter-bird was in such a hurry to get down that he flopped straight into an ants' nest, and the hungry insects fastened on his legs and gnawed them to the bone. That is why the trumpeter-bird has still such spindle shanks.

The other creatures profited by this awful example and came down the tree cautiously and safely. Sigu now rubbed two pieces of wood together to make fire, but just as he produced the first spark, he happened to look away, and the bush-turkey, mistaking the spark for a firefly, gobbled it up and flew off. The spark burned the greedy bird's gullet, and that is why turkeys have red wattles on their throats to this day. The alligator was standing by at the time, doing no harm to anybody ; but as he was for some reason an unpopular character, all the other animals accused him of having stolen and swallowed the spark. In order to recover the spark from the jaws of the alligator Sigu tore out the animal's tongue, and that is why alligators have no tongue to speak of down to this very day.

The Arawaks of British Guiana believe that since its creation the world has been twice destroyed, once by fire and once by flood. Both destructions were brought on it by Aiomun Kondi, the great " Dweller on High," because of the wickedness of mankind. But he announced beforehand the coming catastrophe, and men who accepted the warning prepared to escape from the great fire by digging deep into a sand-reef and there making for themselves a subterranean chamber with a roof of timber supported on massive pillars of the same material. Over it all they spread layers of earth and a thick upper coating of sand. Having carefully removed everything combustible from the neighbourhood, they retired to this underground dwelling and there stayed quietly till the roaring torrent of flame, which swept across the earth's surface, had passed over them. Afterwards, when the destruction of the world by a deluge was at hand, a pious and wise chief named Marerewana was informed of the coming flood and saved himself and his family in a large canoe. Fearing to drift away out to sea or far from the home of his fathers, he had made ready a long cable of bush-rope, with which he tied his bark to the trunk of a great tree. So when the waters subsided he found himself not far from his former abode.

The Macusis of British Guiana say that in the beginning the good spirit Makunaima, whose name means " He who works in the night," created the heaven and the earth. When he had stocked the earth with plants and trees, he came down from his celestial mansion, climbed up a tall tree, and chipped off the bark with a big stone axe. The chips fell into the river at the foot of the tree and were changed into animals of all kinds. When he had thus provided for the creation of animals, the good spirit next created man ; and when the man had fallen into a sound sleep he awoke to find a woman standing at his side. Afterwards the evil spirit got the upper hand on earth ; so the good spirit Makunaima sent a great flood. Only one man escaped in a canoe ; he sent out a rat to see whether the water had abated, and the rat returned with a cob of maize. When the deluge had retreated, the man repeopled the earth, like Deucalion and Pyrrha, by throwing stones behind him In this story the special creation of woman, the mention of the evil spirit, and the incident of the rat sent out to explore the depth of the flood, present suspicious resemblances to the Biblical narrative and may be due to missionary, or at all events European, influence. Further, the mode in which, after the flood, the survivors create mankind afresh by throwing stones behind them, resembles so exactly the corresponding incident in the Greek story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, that it is difficult to regard the two as independent.

Legends of a great flood are current also among the Indians of the Orinoco. On this subject Humboldt observes : " I cannot quit this first chain of the mountains of Encam-arada without recalling a fact which was not unknown to Father Gili, and which was often mentioned to me during our stay among the missions of the Orinoco. The aborigines of these countries have preserved a belief that at the time of the great flood, while their fathers were forced to betake themselves to canoes in order to escape the general inundation, the waves of the sea broke against the rocks of Encamarada. This belief is not found isolated among a single people, the Tamanaques ; it forms part of a system of historical traditions of which scattered notices are discovered among the Maypures of the great cataracts, among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, which falls into the Caura, and among almost all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When the Tamanaques are asked how the human race escaped this great cataclysm, ' the Age of Water,' as the Mexicans call it, they say that one man and one woman were saved on a high mountain called Tamanacu, situated on the banks of the Asiveru, and that on casting behind them, over their heads, the fruits of the Mauritia palm, they saw springing from the kernels of these fruits men and women, who repeopled the earth." This they did in obedience to a voice which they heard speaking to them as they descended the mountain full of sorrow at the destruction of mankind by the flood. The fruits which the man threw became men, and the fruits which the woman threw became women.

The Muyscas or Chibchas of Bogota, in the high Andes of Colombia, say that long ago their ancestors offended Chibchachum, a deity of the second rank, who had hitherto been their special patron and protector. To punish them, Chibchachum created the torrents of Sopo and Tibito, which, pouring down from the hills, flooded the whole plain and rendered cultivation impossible. The people fled to the mountains, but even there the rising waters of the inundation threatened to submerge them. In despair they prayed to the great god Bochica, who appeared to them seated on a rainbow and holding a golden wand in his hand. " I have heard your prayers," said he, " and I will punish Chibchachum. I shall not destroy the rivers, which he has created, because they will be useful to you in time of drought, but I will open a passage for the waters." With these words he threw his golden wand at the mountain, split it from top to bottom at the spot where the river Funzha now forms the famous waterfall of Tequendama. So all the waters of the deluge flowed away down this new opening in the circle of mountains which encloses the high upland tableland of Bogota, and thus the plain became habitable again. To punish Chibchachum, the great god Bochica condemned him to bear on his shoulders the whole weight of the earth, which before that time was supported on massive pillars of wood. When the weary giant tries to *get a little ease by shifting his burden from one shoulder to another, he causes an earthquake.

This tradition is in so far well founded as the evidence of geology appears to prove that for ages the mountain-girt plain of Bogota was occupied by a lake, and that the pent-up waters at last found vent and flowed away through a fissure suddenly cleft by a great earthquake in the sandstone rocks. The cleft in the rocky dam may be seen to this day. It is near the meeting of the rivers Bogota and Muño. Here the wall of sandstone is broken by a sort of natural gateway formed by a beetling crag on one side and a mass of shattered, crumbling rocks on the other. The scene is one well fitted to impress the mind and excite the imagination of primitive man, who sees in the sublime works of nature the handiwork of awful and mysterious beings. The sluggish current of the tawny river flows in serpentine windings towards the labyrinth of rocks and cliffs where it takes its leap into the tremendous abyss.

As you near the fall, and the hollow sound of its tumbling waters grows louder and louder, a great change comes over the landscape. The bare monotonous plain of Bogota is left behind, and you seem to be entering on enchanted land. On every side rise hills of varied outline mantled to their tops with all the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, from the grasses which carpet the ground to the thickets and tall forest trees which spread over the whole a dense veil of green. At their foot the river hurries in a series of rapids, between walls of rock, to the brink of the fall, there to vanish in a cloud of mist and spray, lit up by all the gay colours of the rainbow, into the dark and dizzy chasm below, while the thunderous roar of the cataract breaks the stillness of the lonely hills. The cascade is thrice as high as Niagara ; and by a pardonable exaggeration the river is said to fall perpendicularly from the temperate to the tropical zone.

The Cañaris, an Indian tribe of Ecuador, in the ancient kingdom of Quito, tell of a great flood from which two brothers escaped to a very high mountain called Huaca-yñan. As the waters rose, the hill rose with them, so that the flood never reached the two brothers on the summit. When the water sank and their store of provisions was consumed, the brothers descended and sought their food in the hills and valleys. They built a small house, where they dwelt, eking out a miserable subsistence on herbs and roots, and suffering much from hunger and fatigue. One day, after the usual weary search, they returned home, and there found food to eat and chicha to drink without knowing who could have prepared or brought it. This happened for ten days, and after that they laid their heads together to find out who it was that did them so much good in their time of need. So the elder brother hid himself, and presently he saw two macaws approaching, dressed like Cañaris. As soon as the birds came to the house, they began to prepare the food which they had brought with them. When the man saw that they were beautiful and had the faces of women, he came forth from his hiding-place ; but at sight of him the birds were angry and flew away, leaving nothing to eat. When the younger brother came home from his search for food, and found nothing cooked and ready as on former days, he asked his elder brother the reason, and they were both very angry.

Next day the younger brother resolved to hide and watch for the coming of the birds. At the end of three days the two macaws reappeared and began to prepare the food. The two men waited till the birds had finished cooking and then shut the door on them. The birds were very angry, at being thus trapped, and while the two brothers were holding the smaller bird, the larger one escaped. Then the two brothers took the smaller macaw to wife, and by her they had six sons and daughters, from whom all the Cañaris are descended. Hence the hill Huaca-yñan, where the macaw lived as the wife of the brothers, is looked upon as a sacred place by the Indians, and they venerate macaws and value their feathers highly for use at their festivals

The Indians of Huarochiri, a province of Peru in the Andes to the east of Lima, say that once on a time the world nearly came to an end altogether. It happened thus. An Indian was tethering his llama in a place where there was good pasture, but the animal resisted, showing sorrow and moaning after its manner. The master said to the llama, " Fool why do you moan and refuse to eat? Have I not put you where there is good food ?" The llama answered, " Madman, what do you know about it ? Learn that I am not sad without due cause ; for within five days the sea will rise and cover the whole earth, destroying all there is upon it." Wondering to hear the beast speak, the man asked whether there was any way in which they could save themselves. The llama bade him take food for five days and to follow him to the top of a high mountain called Villca-coto, between the parish of San Damian and the parish of San Geronimo de Surco.

The man did as he was bid, carrying the load of food on his back and leading the llama. On reaching the top of the mountain he found many kinds of birds and animals there assembled. Hardly had he reached this place of refuge when the sea began to rise, and it rose till the water flooded all the valleys and covered the tops of the hills, all but the top of Villca-coto, and even there the waves washed so high that the animals had to crowd together in a narrow space, and some of them could hardly find foothold. The tail of the fox was dipped in the flood, and that is why the tips of foxes' tails are black to this day. At the end of five days the waters began to abate, and the sea returned to its former bounds ; but all the people in the world were drowned except that one man, and from him all the nations of the earth are descended

A similar story of the flood is told by the Indians of Ancasmarca, a province five leagues from Cuzco. They say that a month before the flood came, their sheep displayed much sadness, eating no food by day and watching the stars by night. At last their shepherd asked them what ailed them, and they answered that the conju

nction of stars foreshadowed the coming destruction of the world by water. So the shepherd and his six children took counsel, and gathered together all the food and sheep they could get, and with these they betook themselves to the top of an exceeding great mountain called Ancasmarca. They say that as the water rose, the mountain still rose higher, so that its top was never submerged ; and when the flood sank, the mountain sank also. Thus the six children of that shepherd returned to repeople the province after the great flood.

The Incas of Peru had also a tradition of a deluge. They said that the water rose above the highest mountains in the world, so that all people and all created things perished. No living thing escaped except a man and a woman, who floated in a box on the face of the waters and so were saved. When the flood subsided, the wind drifted the box with the two in it to Tiahuanacu, about seventy leagues from Cuzco. There the Creator commanded them to dwell, and there he himself set to work to raise up the people who now inhabit that country. The way in which he did so was this. He fashioned each nation out of clay and painted on each the dresses they were to wear. Then he gave life and soul to every one of the painted clay figures and bade them pass under the earth. They did so, and then came up at the various places where the Creator had ordered the different nations to dwell. So some of them came out of caves, others issued from hills, others from fountains, and others from the trunks of trees. And because they came forth from these various places, the Indians made various idols (huacas) and places of worship in memory of their origin ; that is why the idols (huacas) of the Indians are of diverse shapes.

The Peruvian legends of a great flood are told more summarily by the Spanish historian Herrera as follows. " The ancient Indians reported, they had received it by tradition from their ancestors, that many years before there were any Incas, at the time when the country was very populous, there happened a great flood, the sea breaking out beyond its bounds, so that the land was covered with water, and all the people perished To this the Guancas inhabiting the vale of Xauxa, and the natives of Chiquito in the province of Collao, add, that some persons remained in the hollows and caves of the highest mountains, who again peopled the land Others of the mountain people affirm that all perished in the deluge, only six persons being saved on a float, from whom descended all the inhabitants of that country That there had been some particular flood may be credited, because all the several provinces agree in it."

The Chiriguanos, a once powerful Indian tribe of southeastern Bolivia, tell the following story of a great flood. They say that a certain potent but malignant supernatural being, named Aguara-Tunpa, declared war against the true god Tunpaete, the Creator of the Chiriguanos His motive for this declaration of war is unknown, but it is believed to have been pure spite or the spirit of contradiction In order to vex the true god, Aguara-Tunpa set fire to all the prairies at the beginning or middle of autumn, so that along with the plants and trees all the animals perished on which in those days the Indians depended for their subsistence ; for as yet they had not begun to cultivate maize and other cereals, as they do now.

Thus deprived of food the Indians nearly died of hunger However, they retreated before the flames to the banks of the rivers, and there, while the earth around still smoked from the great conflagration, they made shift to live on the fish which they caught in the water. Seeing his human prey likely to escape him, the baffled Aguara-Tunpa had recourse to another device in order to accomplish his infernal plot against mankind He caused torrential rain to fall, hoping to drown the whole Chiriguano tribe in the water He very nearly succeeded But happily the Chiriguanos contrived to defeat his fell purpose.

Acting on a hint given them by the true god Tunpaete, they looked out for a large mate leaf, placed on it two little babies, a boy and a girl, the children of one mother, and allowed the tiny ark with its precious inmates to float on the face of the water.

Still the rain continued to descend in torrents; the floods rose and spread over the face of the earth to a great depth, and all the Chiriguanos were drowned ; only the two babes on the leaf of mate were saved. At last, "however, the rain ceased to fall, and the flood sank, leaving a great expanse of fetid mud behind. The children now emerged from the ark, for if they had stayed there, they would have perished of cold and hunger. Naturally the fish and other creatures that live in the water were not drowned in the great flood ; on the contrary they throve on it, and were now quite ready to serve as food for the two babes. But how were the infants to cook the fish which they caught ? That was the rub, for of course all fire on earth had been extinguished by the deluge. However, a large toad came to the rescue of the two children. Before the flood had swamped the whole earth, that prudent creature had taken the precaution of secreting himself in a hole, taking with him in his mouth some live coals, which he contrived to keep alight all the time of the deluge by blowing on them with his breath. When he saw that the surface of the ground was dry again, he hopped out of his hole with the live coals in his mouth, and making straight for the two children he bestowed on them the gift of fire. Thus they were able to roast the fish they caught and so to warm their chilled bodies. In time they grew up, and from their union the whole tribe of the Chiriguanos is descended.

The natives of Tierra del Fuego, in the extreme south of South America, tell a fantastic and obscure story of a great flood. They say that the sun was sunk in the sea, that the waters rose tumultuously, and that all the earth was submerged except a single very high mountain, on which a few people found refuge

The Creation of Man | The Fall of Man | The Mark of Cain
The Great Flood - Intro | The Great Flood - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
The Tower of Babel