[1]
The Navajos, shut up in their cave, had flute-players with them. The
Peruvians were dug out of their cave with a golden _spade_. In the
Tahoe legend, we read that the superior race compelled the inferior
to build a great _temple_ for their protection from floods; and the
oppressed people escaped in _canoes_, while the world blazes behind
them.
Soon after the Navajos came out of the cave, we find them, according
to the legend, possessed of water-jars, and we have references to the
division of the heavens into constellations.
In the Arabian legend of the City of Brass, we are told that the
people who were destroyed were great architects, metallurgists,
agriculturists, and machinists, and that they possessed a written
language.
We turn now to the more reliable evidences of man's condition, which
have been exhumed from the caves and the Drift.
In the seventeenth century, Fray Pedro Simon relates that some
miners, running an adit into a hill near Callao,
[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 71.]
{p. 346}
"met with a ship, _which had on top of it the great mass of the
hill_, and did not agree in its make and appearance with our ships.
Pages:
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492