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corresponding with the Bible story break the context, and do not fit in well with tlie rest. This is obviously the case with a story of the Algocquins (an Indian tribe of N. America), preserved in a very curious pictographic document, where, in the middle of a passage tlescriliing how some of the people were rescued on Turtle Island, the mention of a boat, as though an independent means of rescue, is very awkwardly introduced, (c) Where two forms of the story exist, in one of which the biblical features occur and in the other are absent. When, as with Deucalion's Flood, the former is known to be later, the probability of interpolation may be considered a certainty. Among the Mandans, an Indian tribe on the Missouri River, according to a current Flood legend the ark is a tower-like building, and the supposed model of the building, which is preserved as a relic in a public place, is in shape like a wooden cylinder. But not only is this model called ' the great canoe,' but, in the festival which commemor- ates the Flood, the representative of ' the First Man,' who was saved therein, tells how 'the great canoe ' stranded on a high mountain. Moreover, the festival is alwaj-s arranged to take place when the willows are in leaf, because, so they say, it was a branch of that tree, with all its leaves on, which the bird brought back to the ark. It is clear that we have here a confusion between two stories— an ancient legend according to which the survivors were saved in a tower, and the Bible Flood, (d) Where the Flood legend is mixed up with other stories from the Bible. Thus in that of the Papagos (an Indian tribe, east of California), Montezuma, tlie hero of the F'lood, is so ungrateful to his de- liverer, that he presumes to build a liouse whose top is to reach to heaven, whereupon the great Spirit sends his thunder and destroys the building. Tliis evident borrowing from the Tower of Babel story makes us suspect that his sending out the jaclial after the Flood to see how far the land extended, originated in the sending forth of birds from Noah's ark. In one of the Mexican legends, current in the neighbourhood of Choluln, an artificial mountain, raised as a memento of the mountain in the caves of which the .seven giants were saved from the Flood, threatened to reach to heaven, whereupon the gods sent down fire and destroyed several of the builders. This legend, connected with a half-finished pyramid, shows how readily Bible stories found their way among the aborigines of Mexico, and explains why features of the Bible Flood so often occur in the Flood myths of various Mexican tribes. In the story of the Mandari, above referre<l to as giving special prominence to the Bible feature of the rainbow, the creation of man out of earth stands in close connexion with the Flood. Similarly, the Flood story of the Macoushi (near British Guiana) relates how the first man found, on waking out of a deep sleep, a woman standing by his side. After this we can feel very little confidence in the originality of the statement that after the Flood the rat sent out by a survivor returneil with an ear of maize in its mouth. This is evidently nothing else but a local adaptation of the dove and the olive branch, (e) The stories of the I'apagos ami Macoushi give another ground for suspecting bil)lical inlhiome, namely, where some well-known features of ft class of Flood legends appear so changed a-s to agiee with the Nonchian Deluge. Tlie object of the sending forth of animals in the Indian stories is, as a rule, to obtain earth to create dry ground for the survivors. A rat is sent forth as well as other animals for this pur]iose in the legend of the Ojibways and the Chippuwas, a li^h in those of the tiac and Fox Indians. But in the stories of the Papagos and Macoushi the object
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Is, as in the Bible, to discover the extent of dry land.
In some cases, however, the appearance of bibli- cal details may be after all a mere coincidence. The likelihoou of such coincidence becomes far greater than we might have thought when we take into account the very large number of Flood stories and the singular variety of detail. The following is an attempt to give as shortly as is practicable some idea of the extraordinary extent of this variety.
III. Variety op Details in different Flood Legends. — (1) The Beings destroyed by the Flood are often described as strange or unnatural beings, such as baneful monsters (Persian Burulehesh) ; ape-like men (Thibet) ; descendants of a primeval man and woman, who were drowned in the sea and became a whale and a crab ; the descendants appear, however, to have been human in form, at any rate capable of religious and moral delinquency (Andamanese) ; giants (later Scandinavian Edda) ; men, one tribe of whom consisted only of women, another of men with dog-like tails (Fiji islanders) ; gods of the earth upon whom the Flood was sent at the request of the nether gods (the Sac and Fox Indians) ; a demigod (Ojibways, see above) ; im- perfect men (Quich6 Indians of Guatemala) ; the descendants of gods and men (Miztecs of Mexico, of. Gn 61-*).