r precious possessions,
became wanderers, living on the seeds of grass, eaters of dead and slain
things. Yet, guided by the Beloved Twain, they sought in the light and
under the pathway of the Sun, the Middle of the world, over which alone
they could find the earth at rest(1).

When the tremblings grew still for a time, the people paused at the
First of Sitting Places. Yet they were still poor and defenceless and
unskilled, and the world still moist and unstable. Demons and monsters
fled from the earth in times of shaking, and threatened wanderers.

Then the Two took counsel of each other. The Elder said the earth must
be made more stable for men and the valleys where their children rested.
If they sent down their fire bolts of thunder, aimed to all the four
regions, the earth would heave up and down, fire would, belch over the
world and burn it, floods of hot water would sweep over it, smoke would
blacken the daylight, but the earth would at last be safer for men.

So the Beloved Twain let fly the thunderbolts.

The mountains shook and trembled, the plains cracked and crackled under
the floods and fires, and the hollow places, the only refuge of men and
creatures, grew black and awful. At last thick rain fell, putting out
the fires. Then water flooded the world, cutting deep trails through the
mountains, and burying or uncovering the bodies of things and beings.
Where they huddled together and were blasted thus, their blood gushed
forth and flowed deeply, here in rivers, there in floods, for gigantic
were they. But the blood was charred and blistered and blackened by the
fires into the black rocks of the lower mesas(2). There were vast plains
of dust, ashes, and cinders, reddened like the mud of the hearth place.
Yet many places behind and between the mountain terraces were unharmed
by the fires, and even then green grew the trees and grasses and even
flowers bloomed. Then the earth became more stable, and drier, and its
lone places less fearsome since monsters of prey were changed to rock.

But ever and again the earth trembled and the people were troubled.

"Let us again seek the Middle," they said. So they travelled far
eastward to their second stopping place, the Place of Bare Mountains.

Again the world rumbled, and they travelled into a country to a place
called Where-tree-boles-stand-in-the-midst-of-waters. There they
remained long, saying, "This is the Middle." They built homes there. At
times they met pe