-devils, it would cure them of illness, gray hair, and age. After a
time came the monkey out of the woods, beguiling and wheedling, while
at every chance, with a monkey's love of mischief, he worked at the
stone, trying to dislodge it from the mouth of the cave. At last he
succeeded, and out poured the flood. An old woman ran to a palm that
touched the sky with its vast leaves, and climbed with feverish haste,
but fright and fatigue brought her to a stop when half-way up, and
she hardened to stone, thus blocking the way to all behind her, who,
when they touched her, became stone likewise. Some scrambled down,
splashed through the rising waters, and reached another palm tree,
which they climbed to its top, and so saved their lives.

As the waters were subsiding, Amalwaka came sailing across the ocean
from the east, ascended the Orinoco, carved the figures found near
the head of that river, without leaving his canoe, smoothed the rugged
hills and invented the tides, so that men might go from place to place
on the current, but, being unable to make the Orinoco flow up stream,
he sailed away again into the arch of the rising sun, guided at night
by the constant star and by the tapir and Serikoai,--which is another
story, told by the Arawaks, to this effect: The bride of Serikoai
was seduced by the tapir god, who had first aroused her curiosity and
interest by his attentions, and had finally won her love by promising
to put off his swinish shape and reveal himself as a finer being than
her husband. If only she would follow him to the edge of the earth,
where the sky comes down, she would see that he was a god. The poor
husband was crippled by the wife, that he might not follow, for she
chopped off his leg as he descended an avocado pear-tree, in which
he had been gathering fruit for her. He nearly bled to death, but a
wandering spirit revived him and called his mother, who healed the
wound with gums and helped to make a wooden leg, on which he stumped
over the earth in search of his runaway wife. It is known that the
aborigines performed trepanning with skill, but this is probably the
earliest appearance in an American legend of a wooden leg. Though
he found no foot-prints, it was easy to trace the couple, because
avocados were springing up from seeds that the woman spat out as she
journeyed on. At the edge of the earth he caught the tapir and killed
him; yet the creature's shadow arose from the body and kept on its
flight w