that event. The Mexicans had traditions of a flood that destroyed all animals with the exception of one man and his wife, who escaped in the hollow trunk of an ahahuete or cypress (gopher) tree. The children born numerously to them after the subsidence of the waters were dumb, until they received the gift of speech from a dove, which came and perched itself upon a lofty tree. There are Mexican paintings of this event extant, in which Coxcox, the Noah of the Mexicans, and his wife Xochiquetzal, are seated in the trunk of a tree covered with leaves, and floating amid the waters, while the goddess of water, called Matalcueje, or Chalchiuhege, pours down her floods upon the earth. In the different representations of this

1

scene, men appear swimming and perishing in the waters, and birds are seen fluttering and dying upon the surface, where they have fallen exhausted.

The following seems to have a mixed reference to the fall and to the deluge. It is part of an allegorical painting, the whole of which may be found in plate 15 of Humboldt's Vues des Cordilleras. A serpent cut asunder, but still living, is seen shut up in a tank full of water, from the midst of which a plant arises. To the left is a woman crowned with a garland, probably the voluptuous Tlamezquimille; while to the right is 'HUMBOLDT's Vues des Cordilleras, pl. 26, pp. 206, 207; also HERRERA to the same effect.

seen a man shut up in a kind of jar. In the part we have not copied, a personage is represented to whose victorious arm the miserable condition of the serpent is to be ascribed. The allegory thus pictured has reference, Humboldt says, to the serpent which poisoned the water, the source of all organic life; to the victory over him, like that of Krishna over the dragon Kaliya; to the seduction of the world, and to its purification by water. In this we cannot fail to see the deluge, and more exact inquiry into the tradition would probably furnish still more striking Scripture analogies.

ড

The Mechoachans, a people contiguous to the Mexicans, believed that mankind, becoming forgetful of their origin and their duty, were punished by a universal deluge, from which the priest Tezpi, and his wife and children, were alone preserved. He shut himself up in a large chest of wood, into which he put all kinds of animals and useful seeds. When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to subside, Tezpi sent out a bird called aura,1 which, finding food in dead carcases, returned

1 The zopilote, a species of vulture (Vultur aura), an American substitution for the raven.

not; then several other birds, till at length the humming bird returned with a branch in his beak.1

In North America there are more or less obscured traditions of the deluge among most of the tribes. The most distinct is perhaps that among some of the lake tribes, who hold that the father of all their tribes originally dwelt towards the setting sun, where, being warned in a dream that a flood was coming, he built a raft, on which he preserved his own family and the whole of the animal world. The raft drifted for many months upon the waters, till at length a new earth was made, and man and the animals placed upon it. The traditions of Peru, of Terra Firma, of the Guancas, of the Cubans, and many others, might be mentioned, but they all resemble some of those which have been cited. The Brazilians had a very peculiar tradition of a deluge, which grew out of a quarrel between two brothers, and which rose till the earth was entirely covered. All mankind were destroyed except these two and their wives, who were saved by climbing to the tops of the mountains.

Is it credible, or even possible, that such numerous and widespread traditions, embodying so many pointed coincidences, and in which the ark and the dove so frequently appear, could have been founded on merely local deluges; and not rather on that from which the second father of all mankind was saved ?3

1 HUMBOLDT'S Researches, ii. 65; CLAVIGERO, Hist. Mex. i. 204; HERRERA, Hist. Mex.; Hist. Gen. des Voyages, xviii. 590.

2 THATCHER'S Indian Traits, ii. 148, 149.

3 The reader who is disposed to pursue this inquiry, will find ample information in the works named below:-BRYANT'S Analysis of Ancient Mythology: FABER'S Origin of Pagan Idolatry, and Mysteries of the Cabiri; CATCOTT on the Deluge; HARCOURT'S Doctrine of the Deluge. The traditions are also stated in portions or chapters of SHARON TURNER's Sacred History of the World; by Professor HITCHCOCK in the American Biblical Repository for 1836; and more fully in SMITH'S Sacred Annals. BOCHART in his Phaleg also collects some of the traditions. The interest of the subject is far from adequately represented by the brief indications we are here enabled to afford.

Sixth Week-Third Day.

MONUMENTS OF THE DELUGE.

OUR attention was yesterday given to the consideration of the direct traditions of the deluge, as existing among all or nearly all the nations of mankind. But there is another kind of tradition, not less significant and impressive, which commemorated the same great event in names, and buildings, and ceremonies; and by means of which the memorials of the deluge were wrought into the entire structure of heathenism.

We cannot undertake to present to the reader a tithe of the copious information which exists on this subject; but it may be in our power to indicate its general purport.

It appears, then, to be very certain that the prominent features of the life and character of Noah are incorporated with the history and attributes of many of the deities worshipped in the heathen world. As it is not our intention to occupy our space with a branch of the subject which has been so often discussed as this, we shall be content to point out the names of Osiris, Bacchus, Saturn, Uranus, Deucalion, Minos, Janus, and the northern Bore; and leave it to the reader to explore the points of resemblance for himself, the materials being easy of access.

In looking to the mere external monuments of the deluge, it is a curious confirmation of the view which identifies the

Egyptian Osiris with Noah, to find that the most famous temple of this god was at Theba (Thebes), or rather that the temple itself was so called, and the city was thus named from it. NOW THEBA is, as we have already shown, the very name of the ark, by which it may appear that the temple itself was meant to represent the ark in which Osiris was shut up by Typhon, and cast upon the waters. With this should be connected the boat-like shrine, which appears to have been the most sacred object in most of the Egyptian temples, and which has an obvious connection with this tradition.

In a

The same kind of memorial is to be observed in other countries, where some kind of ark or ship was introduced in the mysteries, and carried about in procession upon the sacred festivals. series of pictures, representing ceremonies in honour of Bacchus, found in the lava-whelmed city of Herculaneum, appears what may be supposed with some probability to indicate the form which the ancients supposed the ark to bear; and which agrees well enough with the idea we have been led to entertain of it. A woman is carrying upon her shoulder a box, having a projecting roof, and at the end a door. Being carried in a commemorative procession, it is clearly a sacred Theba or ark. Its door at the side,

and projecting roof, declare that it was not a mere chest ; while the absence of the usual characteristics, and the occasion of its use, show that it is not a model house or a votive offering.

More striking still, as a direct memorial of the deluge, is the famous Apamæan medal. It was struck during the reign. of Philip the Elder, at the town of Apamea in Phrygia. The city is known to have been formerly called Kibotos, or 'the ark;' and it is also known that the coins of cities in that age exhibited some leading point in their mythological history. The medal in question represents a kind of square vessel float