192 



TRADITIONS OP A DELUGE. 



CHAP.XVII. 



T!ie deluge. 



Correspon- 

 dence 



til clii<«ic 



Interest of 

 f.ich ti'adi- 

 tii>ns. 



Their uiii- 

 lonnity. 



say, " That a man and a woman saved themselves upon 

 a high mountain called Tamanacu, situated on the bank 

 of the Aseveru, and that, throwing behind them, over 

 their heads, the fruits of the ]\Iauritia palm, they saw 

 arising from the nuts of these fruits the men and women 

 who repeopled the earth." Thus among the natives of 

 America, a fable similar to that of Pyrrha and Deucalion 

 commemorates the grand catastrophe of a general inun- 

 dation. IIuml)oldt, in reference to the same event, 

 mentions that hieroglyphic figures are often found along 

 the Orinoco sculptured on rocks now inaccessible but by 

 scaffolding, and that the natives, when asked how these 

 fii,'ures could have been made, answer with a smile, as 

 relating a fact of which a stranger only could be ignorant, 

 " That at the period of the Great Waters their fathers 

 went to that height in boats." 



" These ancient traditions of the human race," says 

 Huml)oldt, " which we find dispersed over the surface 

 of the globe, like the fragments of a vast shipwreck, are 

 of the greatest interest in the philosophical study of our 

 species. Like certain families of plants, which, not- 

 withstanding the diversity of climates and the influence 

 of heights, retain the impress of a common type, the 

 traditions respecting the primitive state of the globe 

 present amcna; all nations a resemblance that fills us 

 with astonishment ; so many different languages, be- 

 longing to branches which aj^pear to have no connexion 

 with each other, transmit the same facts to us. The 

 substance of the traditions respecting the destroyed races 

 and the renovation of nature is every where almost the 

 same, although each nation gives it a local colouring. In 

 the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pa- 

 cific Ocean, it is always on the highest and nearest moun- 

 tain that the remains of the human race were saved ; and 

 this event appears so much the more recent the more un- 

 cultivated tlie nations are, and the shorter the period since 

 they liave begun to acquire a knowledge of themselves. 

 When we attentively examine the Mexican monuments 

 anterior to the discovery of America, — penetrate into 



