299 TRADITIONS OF A DELUGE. 
sophical study of our species. Like certain families 
of plants, which, notwithstanding the diversity of 
climates and the influence of heights, retain the im- 
press of a common type, the traditions respecting 
the primitive state of the globe present among all 
nations a resemblance that fills us with astonish- 
ment ; so many different languages belonging to 
branches which appear to have no connexion with 
each other, transmit the same facts to us. The sub- 
stance 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 Pacific Ocean, it is always on 
the highest and nearest mountain that the remains 
of the human race were saved ; and this event ap- 
pears so much the more recent the more unculti- 
vated the nations are, and the shorter the period 
since they have begun to acquire a knowledge of 
themselves. When we attentively examine the 
Mexican monuments anterior to the discovery of 
America,—penetrate into the forests of the Orinoco, 
and become aware of the smallness of the European 
establishments, their solitude, and the state of the 
tribes which retain their independence,—we cannot 
allow ourselves to attribute the agreement of these 
accounts to the influence of missionaries and to 
that of Christianity upon national traditions. Nor 
is it more probable that the sight of marine bodies, 
found on the summits of mountains, presented to the 
tribes of the Orinoco the idea of those great inunda- 
tions which for some time extinguished the germs 
of organic life upon the globe-—The country which 
extends from the right bank of the Orinoco to the 
