16 Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton Smith 
boat to Colhuacan. As a proof that the skin coracles will 
convey human beings through the most turbulent seas, men- 
tion may be made of one stranded on the west of Holland in 
the sixteenth century, with its tenant still securely girt with- 
in the seal-skin opening, but dead, probably from privation ; 
and that the Greenlanders were considered as belonging to 
the same arctic stock by the first Northmen who visited their 
country, is indicated by the common name of Skrelings (that 
is Eskimaux) which they gave to both. More to the south, 
at the bay of St Francisco, the Californian tribes are almost 
black, as if they were descended from a mixed race of Mon- 
golic Papuas, akin to the Formosans and other black Poly- 
nesians. 
All the nations of the west coast had anciently a solar 
worship, in common with the Asiatic Karakasses and other 
Siberian tribes ; they had also a mythical record of the De- 
luge, some with, and others without, fears for the safety of 
the moon when assailed by the celestial dragon, which is 
common to Negroes, Malays, Chinese, and many South Sea 
Islanders, who make noises and draw their knives during the 
moments of an eclipse. It is only another version of the 
Ark endangered by the overwhelming waters, transferred to 
the heavenly bodies. In Mexican idols and pictures, and in 
bas-reliefs of Yucatan and Peru, the same event is repre- 
sented in the form of a woman being swallowed by the great 
serpent ; a counterpart of ancient pagan Mythi of Western 
Asia and Europe, and occurring also in an ivory carving 
executed in Ceylon. But what unites the American arkite 
legends from north to south, is a bas-relief upon a box of 
Peruvian workmanship, dating before the middle of the six- 
teenth century, and representing the hero of the Deluge, who 
in the north is denominated « Young Chippewa:” with his 
bow in hand he is seen riding the ark, or the aboriginal elk— 
parent of human nature,—and the sun shining over its palm- 
ated head. The elk is winged, and, though four-footed, the 
body terminates in a fish’s tail with a serpent standing upon 
the back, and the turtle dove or the raven (for they are often 
confounded in pagan mythologies), flies out before the rider, 
while diluvian sea-monsters, Boa or Python serpents, and 
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