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{p. 195}
CHAPTER VII.
LEGENDS OF THE CAVE-LIFE.
I HAVE shown that man could only have escaped the fire, the poisonous
gases, and the falling stones and clay-dust, by taking refuge in the
water or in the deep caves of the earth.
And hence everywhere in the ancient legends we find the races
claiming that they came up out of the earth. Man was earth-born. The
Toltecs and Aztecs traced back their origin to "the seven caves." We
have seen the ancestors of the Peruvians emerging from the primeval
cave, _Pacarin-Tampu_; and the Aztec Nanahuatzin taking refuge in a
cave; and the ancestors of the Yurucares, the Takahlis, and the
Mbocobi of America, all biding themselves from the conflagration in a
cave; and we have seen the tyrannical and cruel race of the Tahoe
legend buried in a cave. And, passing to a far-distant region, we
find the Bungogees and Pankhoos, Hill tribes, of the most ancient
races of Chittagong, in British India, relating that "their ancestors
came out of a cave in the earth, under the guidance of a chief named
Tlandrokpah.


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