of
his justice and piety. His preservation was effected in this manner:--He
put all his family, both his sons and their wives, into a vast ark which
he had provided, and he then went into it himself. At the same time,
animals of every species,--boars, horses, lions, serpents,--whatever
lived upon the face of the earth,--followed him by pairs; all which he
received into the ark, and experienced no evil from them." Such is the
tradition of Deucalion, as preserved by Lucian. It is added by his
contemporary Plutarch, that "Deucalion, as his voyage was drawing to a
close, sent out a dove, which coming in a short time back to him,
indicated that the waters still covered the earth; but which on a second
occasion failed to return; or, as some say, returned to him with
mud-stained feet, and thus intimated the abatement of the flood." It
cannot, I think, be rationally doubted that we have in this ancient
legend one other tradition of the Noachian Deluge. Even as related by
Ovid, with all the license of the poet, we find in it the great leading
traits that indicate its parentage. I quote from the vigorous
translation of Dryden.

"Impetuous rain descends;
Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
But from his brother of the seas he craves
To help him with auxiliary waves.
Then with his mace the monarch struck the ground;
With inward trembling earth received the wound,
And rising streams a ready passage found.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost,--
A world of waters, and without a coast.
A mountain of tremendous height there stands
Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands:
Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise
Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff:
He, with his wife, were only left behind
Of perished man; they two were human kind:
The most upright of mortal men was he,--
The most serene and holy woman she."

[Illustration: Fig. 109.

APAMAEAN MEDAL.]

Such are some of the traditions of that great catastrophe which overtook
the human family in its infancy, and made so deep an impression on the
memories of the few awe-struck survivors, that the race never forgot it.
Ere the dispersal of the family it would have of course existed as but
one unique recollection,--a single reflection on the face of an unbroken
mirror. But the mirror has since been