es not float thee onward when thou art on the mountain
top. As the water decreases, thou wilt descend little by little.' Thus
Manu descended gradually. Therefore to the mountain of the north remains
the name, Descent of Manu. The Deluge had destroyed all creatures; Manu
survived alone."[213-1]

Hitherto I have spoken only of the last convulsion which swept over the
face of the globe, and of but one cycle which preceded the present. Most
of the more savage tribes contented themselves with this, but it is
instructive to observe how, as they advanced in culture, and the mind
dwelt more intently on the great problems of Life and Time, they were
impelled to remove further and further the dim and mysterious Beginning.
The Peruvians imagined that _two_ destructions had taken place, the
first by a famine, the second by a flood--according to some a few only
escaping--but, after the more widely accepted opinion, accompanied by
the absolute extirpation of the race. Three eggs, which dropped from
heaven, hatched out the present race; one of gold, from which came the
priests; one of silver, which produced the warriors; and the last of
copper, source of the common people.[213-2]

The Mayas of Yucatan increased the previous worlds by one, making the
present the _fourth_. Two cycles had terminated by devastating plagues.
They were called "the sudden deaths," for it was said so swift and
mortal was the pest, that the buzzards and other foul birds dwelt in the
houses of the cities, and ate the bodies of their former owners. The
third closed either by a hurricane, which blew from all four of the
cardinal points at once, or else, as others said, by an inundation,
which swept across the world, swallowing all things in its mountainous
surges.[214-1]

As might be expected, the vigorous intellects of the Aztecs impressed
upon this myth a fixity of outline nowhere else met with on the
continent, and wove it intimately into their astrological reveries and
religious theories. Unaware of its prevalence under more rudimentary
forms throughout the continent, Alexander von Humboldt observed that,
"of all the traits of analogy which can be pointed out between the
monuments, manners, and traditions of Asia and America, the most
striking is that offered by the Mexican mythology in the cosmogonical
fiction of the periodical destructions and regenerations of the
universe."[215-1] Yet it is but the same fiction that existed elsewhere,
somewhat more defi