TRADITIONS OF A DELUGE. 



191 



mada." When the Tamanacs are asked how the 

 human race survived this great deluge they 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 Mauritia 

 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 inundation. Hum- 

 boldt, in reference to the same event, mentions that 

 hieroglyphic figures are often found along the Ori- 

 noco sculptured on rocks now inaccessible but by 

 scaffolding, and that the natives, when asked how 

 these figures could have been made, answer with a 

 smile, as relating a fact of which a stranger alone 

 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 Humboldt, " which we find dispersed over the 

 surface of the globe, like the fragments of a vast 

 shipwreck, are of the greatest interest in the philo- 

 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 everywhere 

 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- 



