essed the minds of
the few survivors, and seems to have been handed down to their children,
in consequence, with such terror-struck impressiveness, that their
remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It
appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant
countries, and among the most barbarous tribes. It was the laudable
ambition of Humboldt,--first entertained at a very early period of
life,--to penetrate into distant regions, unknown to the natives of
Europe at the time, that he might acquaint himself, in fields of
research altogether fresh and new, with men and with nature in their
most primitive conditions. In carrying out his design, he journeyed far
into the woody wilderness that surrounds the Orinoco, and found himself
among tribes of wild Indians whose very names were unknown to the
civilized world. And yet among even these forgotten races of the human
family he found the tradition of the deluge still fresh and distinct;
not confined to single tribes, but general among the scattered nations
of that great region, and intertwined with curious additions, suggestive
of the inventions of classic mythology in the Old World. "The belief in
a great deluge," we find him saying, "is not confined to one nation
singly,--the Tamanacs: it makes part of a system of historical
tradition, of which we find scattered notions among the Maypures of the
great cataracts; among the Indians of the Rio Erevato, which runs into
the Caura; and among almost all the tribes of the Upper Orinoco. When
the Tamanacs are asked how the human race survived this great
deluge,--'_the age of water_' of the Mexicans,--they say, a man and
woman saved themselves on a high mountain called Tamanacu, situated on
the banks of the Asiveru, and, _casting behind them over their heads_
the fruits of the mauritia palm-tree, they saw the seeds contained in
these fruits produce men and women, who re-peopled the earth. Thus,"
adds the philosophic traveller, "we find in all simplicity, among
nations now in a savage state, a tradition which the Greeks embellished
with all the charms of imagination." The resemblance is certainly very
striking. "Quit the temple," said the Oracle to Deucalion and Pyrrha,
when they had consulted it, after the great deluge, regarding the mode
in which the earth was to be re-peopled,--"vail your heads, unloose your
girdles, and throw behind your backs the bones of your grandmother."
Rightly interpret