The Hurons of North America believe that the founder of their race was a woman named Ataentsic, who had been banished from the sky for having committed some fault. In the Huron heaven there are woods and plains as on earth, and one of the various crimes alleged as the cause of her banishment was that she had cut down a Heaven tree and fell along with it. She chanced to fall on the back of a turtle in the middle of the sea, who consulted the other animals as to what was to be done with her. One of them fished up some soil, and from it made the earth on which Ataentsic lived, and gave birth to twins who were the ancestors of the human

race.I

On one occasion a Dog-Rib Indian chased a squirrel up a tree until he reached the sky, where he set a snare for the squirrel and descended. Next day, instead of the squirrel, the sun was caught, and darkness at once ensued-in other words, the sun was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there," thought the Indian, “I must have caught the sun," so he sent up a number of animals to try to release it, but they were all burned to ashes. Finally a mole, burrowing through the ground of the sky, succeeded in gnawing the cords asunder, but just as it put its head through the ground, a flash of light put its eyes out, and it has been blind ever since. The sun, however, after this experience, travels more carefully."

A Mexican legend tells that during the great deluge, Coxcox, or Teocipactli, the Fish-god, rescued himself by means of a Cypress trunk, and afterwards repeopled the world.

The principal god of several Brazilian tribes was called Jurupari, and one of the Uapes legends regarding him is that on one occasion he devoured the children of the tribe because they had eaten the fruit of the Uacu tree, which was sacred to him. The enraged parents threw him into a fire, from the ashes of which sprang up the Paxiuba tree. This tree is the bones of Jurupari. The god has an intense dislike to women,

A. Lang, Myth, etc., vol. i. pp. 176-7.
Tylor, Early History of Mankind.

and the sacred musical instruments made from that tree must never be seen by them. Should a woman accidentally happen to see them she is at once poisoned, and whenever the women happen to hear the "Jurupari music" during festivals they at once conceal themselves until the danger is past.1

Professor Agassiz, during his journey in Brazil in 1865, heard the legend of the origin of mankind with which a Cotton tree was intimately associated. It was said that the first man, who was named Caro Sacaribu, was also divine. He had a son, an inferior being, named Rairu, who was also his prime minister, but to whom he was inimical. He tried to get rid of him in various ways, and among other stratagems he made a figure resembling a tatu or armadillo, which he buried in the ground, leaving only the tail exposed, which he covered with a kind of oil. This oil when touched adheres to the skin. He then ordered Rairu to pull the tatu out of the hole and bring it to him. Rairu accordingly seized the tail, but his hand stuck to it, and the tatu, being suddenly endowed with life by the Supreme Being, plunged into the earth and dragged Rairu with it. Rairu in time succeeded in reaching the surface again, and told Caro Sacaribu that in the earth there were great numbers of men and women, and that it would be an excellent thing to get them out to till the soil and make themselves generally useful. Caro Sacaribu was pleased with this idea, and planted a seed in the ground, from which sprang a Cotton tree, and from the cotton it bore he formed a long thread. Rairu, then, holding one end of the thread, descended once more into the earth through the same hole that he had been dragged previously. He collected all the people together, and they were drawn up through the hole by means of the thread. The first lot were small and ugly, but they gradually improved in appearance, until finally the men were handsome and the women beautiful. Unfortunately the thread by now had

Marian Edwardes and Lewis Spence, A Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology.

become worn and weak, and broke, so that the great majority of the last lot fell back into the hole and were lost, and this, say the Mundurucus, is the reason why beauty is such a rare gift in the world. Caro Sacaribu then arranged the population he had drawn from the earth into different tribes, and marked or tatooed them with different colours and patterns. After this was done, a residue of the smallest and ugliest specimens of the human race were left, and, drawing a red line over their noses, he said to them, "You are not worthy to be men and women-go and be animals." Accordingly they were changed into the birds called Mutums, and these, with their red beaks and melancholy voices, still wander through the forests.

U

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