104 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



human life by water overwhelming a flourishing world, 

 and the subsequent restoration. 



The widely spread Algonkin stock has many such 

 legends, in which one or several persons and animals sur- 

 vive by floating in a canoe or raft, and at their behest a 

 beaver or a muskrat — the most natural agents — bring up 

 from the bottom a little mud, which is expanded by magic 

 into a new continent ; but frequently birds do this service 

 or otherwise help to form livable conditions. The Lenni 

 Lenape (Delawares) had a tradition of a universal deluge 

 in the far distant past, which Dr. Brinton 27 recounted as 

 follows, assuring us that it is unmixed with any teaching 

 by white missionaries: "The few people that survived 

 had taken refuge on the back of a turtle who had reached 

 so great an age that his shell was mossy, like the bank of 

 a runlet. In this forlorn condition a loon flew that way, 

 which they asked to dive and bring up land. He complied 

 but found no bottom. Then he flew away and returned 

 with a small quantity of earth in his bill. Guided by him, 

 the turtle swam to a place where a spot of dry land was 

 found. There the survivors settled and re-peopled the 

 land." 



Few legends explain how or why the flood occurred. 

 The Ojibways, however, say that it was the result of the 

 malice of an underground monster visualized as a huge 

 serpent (recalling the earth-dragon of the Chinese), which 

 throughout all their mythology is the antagonist of the 

 good, constructive genius represented by their tribal hero 

 Manabozho. 



The Beaver Indians of the Mackenzie Valley offer a 

 more materialistic and more picturesque explanation. 

 They told George Keith, one of the fur-traders there a 

 century ago, whose Letters are printed in Masson's col- 



