e
ice, and surely it is the very color of ice, and he believes further
that a monster serpent-god coils his huge back to the firmament and with
his scales abrades its face and causes the ice-dust to fall upon the
earth. In the winter-time it falls as snow, but in the summer-time it
melts and falls as rain, and the Shoshoni philosopher actually sees the
serpent of the storm in the rainbow of many colors.

The _Oraibi_ philosopher who lives in a _pueblo_ is acquainted with
architecture, and so his world is seven-storied. There is a world below
and five worlds above this one. _Muinwa_, the rain-god, who lives in
the world immediately above, dips his great brush, made of feathers of
the birds of the heavens, into the lakes of the skies and sprinkles the
earth with refreshing rain for the irrigation of the crops tilled by
these curious Indians who live on the cliffs of Arizona. In winter,
_Muinwa_ crushes the ice of the lakes of the heavens and scatters it
over the earth, and we have a snow-fall.

The Hindoo philosopher says that the lightning-bearded Indra breaks the
vessels that hold the waters of the skies with his thunder-bolts, and
the rains descend to irrigate the earth.

The philosopher of civilization expounds to us the methods by which the
waters are evaporated from the land and the surface of the sea, and
carried away by the winds, and gathered into clouds to be discharged
again upon the earth, keeping up forever that wonderful circulation of
water from the heavens to the earth and from the earth to the
heavens--that orderly succession of events in which the waters travel by
river, by sea, and by cloud.

_Rainbow._--In _Shoshoni_, the rainbow is a beautiful serpent that
abrades the firmament of ice to give us snow and rain. In Norse, the
rainbow is the bridge Bifrost spanning the space between heaven and
earth. In the Iliad, the rainbow is the goddess Iris, the messenger of
the King of Olympus. In Hebrew, the rainbow is the witness to a
covenant. In science, the rainbow is an analysis of white light into its
constituent colors by the refraction of raindrops.

_Falling stars._--In _Ute_, falling stars are the excrements of dirty
little star-gods. In science--well, I do not know what falling stars are
in science. I think they are cinders from the furnace where the worlds
are forged. You may call this mythologic or scientific, as you please.

_Migration of birds._--The _Algonkian_ philosopher explains the
migra