HISTORICAL TEADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 313 



above all. Each of the lower deities presides over one parti- 

 cular caste or family of Indians, of whicli he is supposed to have 

 been the creator. " Some make themselves of the caste of the 

 tiger, some of the liouj some of the guanaco, and others of the 

 ostrich, etc. They imagine that these deities have each their 

 separate habitations, in vast caverns under the earth, beneath 

 some lake, hill, etc.; and that when an Indian dies, his soul 

 goes to live with the deity who presides over his particular 

 family, there to enjoy the happiness of being eternally drunk. 

 They believe that their good deities made the world, and that 

 they first created the Indians in their caves, gave them the 

 lance, the bow and arrows, and the stone-bowls, to fight and 

 hunt with, and then turned them out to shift for themselves. 

 They imagine that the deities of the Spaniards did the same 

 by them; but that, instead of lances, bows, etc., they gave 

 them guns and swords. They suppose that when the beasts, 

 birds, and lesser animals were created, those of the more nim- 

 ble kind came immediately out of their caves ; but that the 

 bulls and cows being the last, the Indians were so frightened 

 at the sight of their horns, that they stopped up the entrance 

 of their caves with great stones. This is the reason they give 

 why they had no black cattle in their country till the Spaniards 

 brought them over, who more wisely had let them out of the 

 caves." ^ 



The possibility that the Brazilian belief in the caypor or 

 wild ape-like being of the woods may be derived from a re- 

 collection of a great extinct ape has been already mentioned, 

 but thei'e is a circumstance which rather favours the idea of 

 its being a myth, founded on the examination of fossil bones. 

 Like the mammoth, and the mastodon, and the creators of the 

 beasts and birds, he is thought to live underground. " They 

 believe he has subterranean campos and hunting grounds in 

 the forest, well stocked with pacas and deer."^ It is possible, 

 too, that the notion of subterranean animals, who die if they 

 see the daylight, like the mammoths of Siberia, may be traced 

 in various stories. Thus, the Fijiaus tell a tale of two rocks, 



, ' Thos. Falkner, 'A Description of Patagonia,' etc.; Hereford, 1774', p. 114. 

 ' Bates, vol. ii. p. 204. 



