THE DELUGE 
the Bororos to run for their lives. The w&ter was touch¬ 
ing his feet, when he thought of a novel expedient. He 
began to remove the red-hot stones which had lain under 
the fire and threw them right and left into the water. 
By rapid evaporation (at the contact of the hot missiles, it 
is to be presumed, as the legend does not say) the water 
ceased to rise. In fact, the water gradually retired, and 
the Bororo eventually returned to the spot where he had 
left the tribesmen. All were dead. He went one day 
into the forest and he found a doe, which had in some 
mysterious way escaped death, and he took her for his 
wife. From this strange union were born children who 
were hornless and quite human, except that they were 
very hairy. After a few generations the hair entirely 
disappeared. That was how the Bororo race was 
preserved.” 
That extraordinary legend was, to my mind, a very 
interesting one, not in itself, but from several facts which 
in its ignorant language it contained. First of all, the 
knowledge of the Bororos concerning a former hairy race 
— a hairy race referred to in legends found all over the 
Eastern Asiatic coast and on• many of the islands in the 
Pacific from the Kuriles as far as Borneo. Then it would 
clearly suggest a great deluge and flood which most 
certainly took place in South America in days long gone 
by, and was indeed quelled by burning stones -— not, of 
course, thrown by the hands of a Bororo, from the summit 
of a mountain, but by a great volcanic eruption spitting 
fire and molten rocks. 
As I have stated elsewhere, there was every possible 
indication in Central Brazil that torrential rains on an 
inconceivable scale, naturally followed by unparalleled 
floods, had taken place, in the company of or followed by 
volcanic activity on a scale beyond all imagination. One 
had only to turn one’s head round and gaze at the scenery 
almost anywhere in Central Brazil, but in Matto Grosso 
221 
