oom profound,--an ocean without light.
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent
heat."]

The legend then pictures a council between these "Fathers" and the
Supreme Creator; after which, the word is spoken, and the earth bursts
forth from the darkness, with its great mountains and forests and
animals and birds, as they might to a voyager approaching the shore. An
episode occurs, describing a deluge, but still bearing in it the
traces of the double tradition,--the one referring to some primeval
catastrophe, and the other to a local inundation, which had perhaps
surprised the first legislators in the midst of their efforts. The
Mexican tradition (Codex Chimalpopoca) shows more distinctly the united
action of the Mediator (Quetzalcohuatl) and the Deity:--"From ashes had
God created man and animated him, and they say it is Quetzalcohuatl who
hath perfected him who had been made, and hath _breathed into him, on
the seventh day, the breath of life_."

Another legend, after describing the creation of men of wood, and women
of _cibak_, (the marrow of the corn-flag,) tells us that "the fathers
and the children, from want of intelligence, did not use the language
which they had received to praise the benefaction of their creation, and
never thought of raising their eyes to praise Hurakan. Then were they
destroyed in an inundation. There descended from heaven a rain of
bitumen and resin... And on account of them, the earth was obscured; and
it rained night and day. And men went and came, out of themselves, as if
struck with madness. They wished to mount upon the roofs, and the houses
fell beneath them; when they took refuge in the caves and the
grottoes, these closed over them. This was their punishment and
destruction."--Vol. I. p. 55.

In the Mexican tradition, instead of the rain we find a violent eruption
of the volcanoes, and men are changed into fishes, and again into
_chicime_,--which may designate the barbarian tribes that invaded
Central America.

In still another tradition, the Deity and his associates are more
plainly men of superior intelligence, laboring to civilize savage
races; and finally, when they cannot inspire two essential elements of
civilization,--a taste for labor, and the religious idea,--a sudden
inundation delivers them from the indocile people. Then--so far as the
mysterious language of the legend can be interpreted--they appear to
have withd