. The testimony of the rocks; . nd a half ago, the old Greek artist has introduced into his medaltwo points of time. Two of the figures represent Noe and his wife quit-ting the ark; while the other two exhibit them as seated within it. AnEnglish print of the death of Abel, now before me, which dates a littleafter the times of the Revolution, shows, on the same principle, the tAvobrothers, represented by four figures,— two of these quietly oflFering uptheir respective sacrifices in the background, and the other two grapplingIn deadly warfare in front. THE NOACHIAN DELUGE 299 figured by Humboldt
. The testimony of the rocks; . nd a half ago, the old Greek artist has introduced into his medaltwo points of time. Two of the figures represent Noe and his wife quit-ting the ark; while the other two exhibit them as seated within it. AnEnglish print of the death of Abel, now before me, which dates a littleafter the times of the Revolution, shows, on the same principle, the tAvobrothers, represented by four figures,— two of these quietly oflFering uptheir respective sacrifices in the background, and the other two grapplingIn deadly warfare in front. THE NOACHIAN DELUGE 299 figured by Humboldt, the man and woman who survivedthe age of water are shown shnilarly mclosed in a leaf-tufted box, or hollow trunk of a tree; while a giganticfemale,—Matalcueje, the goddess of water, — is seen pour-ing down her floods around them, and upon an over-whelmed human figure, representative apparently of tlievictims of the catastrophe. All is classical in the formsof the one representation, and uncouth in those of the Fig. OLD MEXICAN PICTURE. {Humboldt.) other. They bear the same sort of artistic relation toeach other that the rude Tamanac tradition bears, in aliterary point of view, to the well constructed story andelegant verse of Ovid; but they are charged apparentlywith the same meaning, and shadow forth the same event. The tradition of the Flood may, I repeat, be properlyregarded as universal; seeing there is scarce any consid-erable race of man among which, in some of its manyforms, it is not to be found. Xow, it has been arguedby some of the older theologians, with a not very cogentlogic, that the universality of the tradition estabUshes the 300 THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. universality of the Flood, — that where the tradition is tohe founds the Flood inust have heen ^ — an argument whichwould have force if it could also be shown that each tribehad had its own Noah, saved by ark, raft, or canoe, or onsome tall mountain summit, in the region in which hisdescendants con
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