heroes, spirits. To each stone or rock a story is attached, a
creation of the fancy suggested by the surroundings and by the popular
traditions; and each story forms an episode in the history of the hero
or spirit. The stones and rocks thus come to constitute a book
chronicling the history of the tribe and the deeds of its great men--a
book quite legible to the man who has been taught the stories. These
grow with every generation, receiving such additions as fancy and
reflection dictate, and gradually taking on literary form. In the
territory of the Australian Arunta every stone is connected with some
incident in the careers of the mythical ancestors, and the stories taken
together form the legendary history of the origin of customs.[564] In
Samoa and New Guinea many stones are pointed out as having been set in
place by local heroes. In North America innumerable rocks and stones are
connected with the mythical ancestors and creators of the tribes.

+303+. Mountains have everywhere been regarded as abodes of spirits or
deities, and therefore sacred. Their height and massiveness invested
them with dignity (even as now they appeal mightily to the imagination),
and their lofty summits and rugged sides were full of danger and
mystery. Sacred mountains are found in North America, Bengal, Africa,
and elsewhere. Naturally they are often abodes of gods of rain; they are
feared on account of the spirits inhabiting them, but they are also
resorted to as places where divine revelations may be obtained.[565] The
Semitic, Hindu, and Greek examples are familiar: the Hebrew and
Canaanite Sinai (or Horeb), Nebo, Carmel, Hermon; the Arabian Arafat,
near Mecca; the Babylonian Ekur; in India, Meru, Mandara, Himavat, and
other mountains; in Greece, Olympus and Parnassus.

+304+. Mountains are also worshiped as being themselves divine.[566] The
cult, however, has not been important; the physical mass is too solid,
lacking in movement, and human interest naturally centered in the spirit
or deity who dwelt therein.[567]

+305+. Mythological fancy has made them the abodes and places of
assembly of gods and glorified saints, usually in the north. The
mythical Ekur was the dwelling place of Babylonian deities.[568] In
India various peaks in the Himalayas, inaccessible to men, were assigned
to groups of deities, and the mythical world-mountain Meru was the
special abode of great gods, who there lived lives of delight.[569] On
the highest peak o