ir reach. As streams run in tortuous
channels, and as rains accompany the lightning serpent, this animal was
occasionally the symbol of the waters in their dangerous manifestations.
The Huron magicians fabled that in the lakes and rivers dwelt one of
vast size called _Angont_, who sent sickness, death, and other mishaps,
and the least mite of whose flesh was a deadly poison. They added--and
this was the point of the tale--that they always kept on hand portions
of the monster for the benefit of any who opposed their designs.[136-1]
The legends of the Algonkins mention a rivalry between Michabo, creator
of the earth, and the Spirit of the Waters, who was unfriendly to the
project.[136-2] In later tales this antagonism becomes more and more
pronounced, and borrows an ethical significance which it did not have at
first. Taking, however, American religions as a whole, water is far more
frequently represented as producing beneficent effects than the reverse.

Dogs were supposed to stand in some peculiar relation to the moon,
probably because they howl at it and run at night, uncanny practices
which have cost them dear in reputation. The custom prevailed among
tribes so widely asunder as Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois,
Algonkins, and Greenland Eskimos to thrash the curs most soundly during
an eclipse.[137-1] The Creeks explained this by saying that the big dog
was swallowing the sun, and that by whipping the little ones they could
make him desist. What the big dog was they were not prepared to say. We
know. It was the night goddess, represented by the dog, who was thus
shrouding the world at midday. The ancient Romans sacrificed dogs to
Hecate and Diana, in Egypt they were sacred to Isis, and thus as
traditionally connected with night and its terrors, the Prince of
Darkness, in the superstition of the middle ages, preferably appeared
under the form of a cur, as that famous poodle which accompanied
Cornelius Agrippa, or that which grew to such enormous size behind the
stove of Dr. Faustus. In a better sense, they represented the more
agreeable characteristics of the lunar goddess. Xochiquetzal, most
fecund of Aztec divinities, patroness of love, of sexual pleasure, and
of childbirth, was likewise called _Itzcuinan_, which, literally
translated, is _bitch-mother_. This strange and to us so repugnant title
for a goddess was not without parallel elsewhere. When in his wars the
Inca Pachacutec carried his arms into the province