152 THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES^ LL.D.^ M.R.A.S., ON THE 



This obviously means the rainbow (but is called signets, or seals, as 

 though displayed to ratify a covenant — that covenant which God 

 made with Noah and his sons that He would never again destroy 

 the earth with a flood). 



But again it is clear that if the good man was prudent enough to 

 send out the dove once and it came back to him because it could 

 find no dry ground to rest on, he would, as the Bible story tells and 

 as the Assyrian story does not, have sent the bird out a second time, 

 ere he ventured forth himself with his family and his great li^ang 

 cargo. And then, too, whereas the "seven days' rain" of the 

 Assyrian poem were wholly inadequate to flood the whole earth 

 or even the whole habitats of man, the Bible first says that "the 

 fountains of the great deep were broken up," and then that rain fell 

 during " forty days." (The thought that Ea or Ae may be a form 

 of the divine name Jah is strengthened by the title that Ea else- 

 where receives of '* the wise and open of e-ar.")"^ 



The Babylonian story is approached in clearness and detail by the 

 traditions of the first doings of mankind recited by the Masai of 

 East Africa at their annual convention in the hearing of the German 

 Resident.! And, as it had been previously stated, that this world- 

 wide tradition was unknown to the negroes, I might add that a 

 Mr. Hewitt, who had worked among the raw heathen, of the Upper 

 Congo, told me that the Ballolo recount that Khangi (God) and his 

 wife made man and his wife and put them into a beautiful garden, 

 and that they disobeyed some command of his and were turned out^ 

 while Khangi sailed down the river and was never more seen by 

 men ; and that a great while afterwards, when men had become 

 very numerous and very wicked, Khangi destroyed all but a very 

 few with a mighty flood. And, lastly, I would say that among the 

 North American Indians, legends of the flood are so abundant that 

 the late Mr. Owen D. Orsey, whom as Vice-President of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, I had heard lecture 

 upon a group of six Indian languages, told me that every Indian 

 tribe that he came across possessed the tradition. 



^ Pinches, O.T. in the Light, p. 18, c/. 21. 



t See an article in the Contemporary Review for 1901 by Professor 

 Emil Reich. 



