314 HISTOEICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OP OBSERVATION. 



male and female Lado^ wliicli are two deities who were turned 

 by the sight of daylight into stone / and in the West Indies 

 there were men who dwelt in Cimmerian darkness in their 

 caves, and coming out were turned into stones and trees by 

 the sight of the sun.^ 



Tales of giants and monsters, which stand in direct con- 

 nexion with the finding of great fossil bones, are scattered 

 broadcast over the mythology of the world. Huge bones, 

 found at Punto Santa Elena, in the north of Guayaquil, have 

 served as a foundation for the story of a colony of giants who 

 dwelt there.^ The whole area of the Pampas is a great sepul- 

 chre of enormous extinct animals ; no wonder that one great 

 plain should be called the " Field of the Giants," and that such 

 names as " the hill of the giant," " the stream of the animal," 

 should be guides to the geologist in his search for fossil 

 bones.* 



In North America it is the same. The fossil bones of 

 Mexico are referred to the giants who dwelt in the land in 

 early times, and were found living in the plains of Tlascala by 

 the Olmecs, who came there before the Toltecs. At the time 

 of the conquest, Bernal Diaz was told of their huge stature 

 and their crimes ] and, to show him how big they were, the 

 people brought him a bone of one of them, which he measured 

 himself against, and it was as tall as he, who was a man of rea- 

 sonable stature. He and his companions were astonished to 

 see those bones, and held it for certain that there had been 

 giants in that land.^ The Indians of North America tell how 

 their mythic hero, Manabozho, " killed the ancient monsters 

 whose bones we now see under the earth." They use pieces 

 of the bones of these monsters as charms, and most likely the 

 pieces of bone drawn in their pictures as instruments of magic 

 power are such. They tell of giants who could stride over the 



' Seemann, ' Viti,' p. 66. - Oviedo, in Purclias, vol. v. p. 959. 



^ Humboldt, Vues des Cord., pi. 26. Eivero and Tschudi, Ant. Per. p. 51. 



** Darwin, in Narr., toI. iii. p. 155. 



= Bernal Diaz, Conq. de la Nueva Espafia ; Madrid, 1795, vol. i. p. 350. 

 Tylor, ' Mexico,' p. 236. Clavigero, vol. i. p. 125. Humboldt, Vues des Cord., 

 pi. 26. 



