Researches into the early history of Mankind and the development of Civilization . gainst allsorts of weapons, and he has a sort of arm which comes outof his shoulder, and which he uses as we do ours.^^ ^ It ishard to imagine that anything but the actual sight of a liveelephant can have given rise to this tradition. The suggestionthat it might have been founded on the sight of a mammothfrozen with his flesh and skin, as they are found in Siberia, isnot tenable, for the trunks and tails of these animals perishfirst, and are not preserved like the more solid parts, so thatthe Asiatic myths which
Researches into the early history of Mankind and the development of Civilization . gainst allsorts of weapons, and he has a sort of arm which comes outof his shoulder, and which he uses as we do ours.^^ ^ It ishard to imagine that anything but the actual sight of a liveelephant can have given rise to this tradition. The suggestionthat it might have been founded on the sight of a mammothfrozen with his flesh and skin, as they are found in Siberia, isnot tenable, for the trunks and tails of these animals perishfirst, and are not preserved like the more solid parts, so thatthe Asiatic myths which have grown out of the finding of thesefrozen beasts, know nothing of such appendages. Moreover, no savage who hadnever heard of theuse of an elephantstrunk would ima-gine from a sightof the dead animal,even if its trunkwere perfect, thatits use was to becompared with thatof a mans notion thatFig- 30. the Indian story of the Great Elk was a real reminiscence of a Hving proboscidian,is strengthened by a remarkable drawing, Fig. 30, from one of Charlevoix, vol. v. p. HISTOEICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 305 the Mexican picture-writings. It represents a masked priestsacrificing a liumau victim, and Humboldt copies it iu the Vues des Cordilleres with the following remarks :— I shouldnot have had this hideous scene engraved, were it not that thedisguise of the sacrificing priest presents some remarkable andapparently not accidental resemblances with the Hindoo Ganesa[the elephant-headed god of wisdom]. The Mexicans usedmasks imitating the shape of the heads of the serpent, thecrocodile, or the jaguar. One seems to recognize in the sacri-ficers mask the trunk of an elephant or some pachyderm re-sembling it in the shape of the head, but with an upper jawfurnished with incisive teeth. The snout of the tapir no doubtprotrudes a little more than that of our pigs, but it is a longway from the tapirs snout to the trunk figured in the CodexBorgianus. Had the peopl
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