MYTHS AND TOPOGRAPHY 29 



a river chasm, we may expect to find that these diversi- 

 ties of scenery have from time immemorial arrested 

 attention. 



Whatever departs from ordinary usage and experi- 

 ence prompts, even among the rudest people, a desire 

 for explanation. The more striking elements of topo- 

 graphy accordingly aroused the curiosity of the earliest 

 races who came to dwell among them, and to whom, 

 in the infancy of the world, the forces of nature were 

 more or less mysterious. These forces were then 

 looked upon as visible manifestations of the agency 

 of superior beings, whose conflicts or co-operation 

 were held to account for the changes of external 

 nature. Thus, by a system of personification that 

 varied from clime to clime, primeval mankind sur- 

 rounded itself with invisible deities, to each of whom 

 some special function in the general government and 

 progress of the world was assigned. 



Hence the problems presented by the more impres- 

 sive details of the scenery of the earth's surface were 

 in truth among the earliest with which the human race 

 began to deal. If we try to discover how they were 

 first approached, and how their treatment varied, not 

 only with peculiarities of race and national tempera- 

 ment, but with conditions of climate and variations of 

 topography, we are led backward into the study of 

 some of the most venerable efforts of the human 

 imagination, which, though now in large measure 

 faded or vanished, may yet be in some slight degree 

 recovered from the oldest mythologies and super- 

 stitions. In many of the earlier myths we may recog- 

 nise primitive attempts to account for some of the 



