NOTES. CX1X 



" Thus Delphi, whose connection with Deucalion's flood is also otherwise 

 testified (Pausan. x. 6), is surpassed in antiquity by Arcadia, and Arcadia by 

 Athens. Apollonius Rhodius, who imitates older examples, speaks quite in 

 accordance herewith where he says (iv. 261) that Egypt was inhabited before 

 all other countries " when as yet not all the luminaries of heaven had begun 

 tLeir course ; as yet the people of Danaus were not, neither Deucalion's race ; 

 only the Arcadians were in existence ; of whom it is said that they lived 

 before the Moon, feeding on acorns from the oaks of the mountains." So 

 also Nonnus (xli.) says of the Syrian Beroe, that it was inhabited before the 

 Sun. 



Such a custom of taking supposed epochs in the construction of the Uni- 

 verse as chronological eras, belongs to a period in modes of contemplation, in 

 which all imagery is, as yet, more vivid than at later epochs, and is nearly 

 allied to genealogical local poetry. Thus it is even not improbable that the 

 tale of the combat of the giants in Arcadia, sung by an Arcadian poet, and to 

 which allusion is made in the words referred to above of the ancient Theo- 

 dorus " (whom some regard as a Samothracian, and whose work must have beea 

 a very comprehensive one), may have given occasion to the diffusion of the 

 epithet 7rpo<reA.7?i/oi applied to the Arcadians." Respecting the double name of 

 " Arkades Pelasgoi," and the distinction drawn between a more ancient and 

 more modern population of Arcadia, compare the excellent work called "der 

 Peloponessos," by Ernst Curtius, 1851, S. 160 and 180. In the New Con- 

 tinent, also, as I have shown elsewhere (see my " Kleine Schriften," Bd. i. 

 S. 115), the tribe of the Muyscas or Mozcas, on the high table-land of 

 Bogota, boasted in its historical myths of a proseleuic antiquity. They con- 

 nected the origin of the Moon with the tradition of a great inundation, which 

 a woman who accompanied the wonder-working personage Botschika, occa- 

 sioned by her magic arts. Botschika drove away the woman (who was called 

 Huythaca or Schia). She left the earth and became the Moon, " which till 

 then had never given light to the Muyscas." Botschika, taking pity upon man- 

 kind, opened with a strong hand the steep rocky wall near Canoas, where the 

 Rio de Funzha now precipitates itself, in the celebrated waterfall of the 

 Tequendama. The valley, which had previously been filled with water, was 

 thus laid dry, a geognostical romance which is often repeated, as, for 

 example, in the closed Alpine Valley of Cashmeer, where the powerful re- 

 mover of the waters is called Kasyapa. 



( 523 ) p. 320." Karl Bonnet, Betrachtung iiber die Natur, ubersetzt von 

 Titius," 2d edition, 1772, S. 7, Note 2, (the first edition was in 1766). In the 



