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be the highest ground in Central Asia, and to have been the scene of changes which gave rise to a cold climate with but two months of summer in the year. In this Persian legend we have one of the many traditions which have come down from the past concerning disaster and ruin befalling fair lands where men once dwelt in peace. most widespread of these, being in fact found among all the leading races of the world, is that which tells of a fearful flood which drowned mankind. The sea-shells and fossil fishes imbedded in rocks now many hundreds of feet above the level of the sea could only be accounted for by supposing either that the sea once came up and covered the highest hills, leaving its wrecks behind; or that the mountains had been down in the sea; and as the former seemed the more likely of the two, the tradition took that shape.

I shall have to resist the temptation to relate many of these traditions, but the Chaldæan must be told because of its striking likeness to the record of the Flood in the Book of Genesis. There are in fact two Chaldæan accounts of the Deluge, one of which, belonging to a series of legends on

tablets found among the ruins of Nineveh, has of late come to light, and resembles that now given.

It is said that the god Ilu (see page 201) warned Xisuthrus of a flood by which mankind would be destroyed, and commanded him to write a history of all things and to bury it in the City of the Sun. He was then to build a ship, and take refuge in it with his relations and friends, and also every kind of beast and bird, with needful food for all. This he did, and when the flood came sailed as he was bidden to the gods.' That he might know whether the waters had abated, he sent out birds three times, and the third time they came back no more, by which he judged that the earth was again dry land. Looking out from a window he found that the ship had stranded upon the side of some mountain, and he thereupon quitted it with his wife and daughter. After worshipping the earth and offering sacrifice to the gods, he was translated to live in their high dwelling-place, and as he arose he bade farewell to those whom he had left in the ship, and told them to return to Babylon and dig up the books which

he had buried. This they did, and taught from those books the true religion to the Chaldæans.

The Babylonians and the Jews were members of the same race, and this may explain the likeness between their traditions. Thus the Chaldæan records speak of the building of the Tower of Babel, the legend of which has just been found on another tablet from Nineveh, how the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their own strength and size and despising the gods, undertook to raise a tower whose top should reach the sky in the place where Babylon now stands, but when it approached the heaven, the winds helped the gods, and overthrew the work upon its builders; then the gods confused the speech of men, who till that time had all spoken the same language. The Bible gives ten patriarchs who lived before the flood, each of whom died at a great age, and the Chaldæan history speaks of ten kings whose reigns, added together, amount to 432,000 years, while in Arab, Chinese, Hindu and German legend, ten mythical persons are said to have lived before the dawn of history. So strongly runs the likeness between the old

traditions, a likeness to be expected, since they are the children of one parent. That parent was the busy, wonder-filled mind of man, when it shaped the creatures of its fancy out of the facts around; creatures that have found a home among every people.

You must read elsewhere the story of the Northern giants who were sent to overturn the earth, and who drowned all mankind save an old couple whom the gods told to dance on the bones of the earth (by which of course the stones are meant) nine times, whence arose nine pairs of men and women; of the Greek and his wife who, when the flood came, took refuge in an ark and leaving it when the land was dry, threw stones behind them, which were thereupon changed into men ; of the Hindu who saved the life of a fish, for which kind deed the grateful creature rescued him, when the great waters came, by fastening his ship to its horn; and of the South Sea fisherman who by ill luck caught his hooks in the water-god's hair, which so angered the god that he drowned the world, but, strange to say, spared the fisher

man.

Leaving the legends, it would seem that the Aryans had gradually spread themselves over that part of Asia called Bactria; the tribes that afterwards settled in Persia and India dwelling, some in the north-east, others in the south-east; while the western part of the country was occupied by the tribes that were to people Europe. We shall see at the end of this chapter in what order they are thought to have left.

(b) THEIR STATE OF CIVILIZATION.

Of the forefathers of the Aryans nothing is known. Remains yielded by every quarter of the globe show that mankind passed through a state when the rudest and roughest tools were gladly used, and there can be little doubt that although the Aryans had learnt the value of metals, they were the offspring of people who had in a far-off past made shift with stone, bone, wood, and such like materials. At the unknown period when the Aryans dwelt on the rich pastures and fertile soil of their high table-land they were far in advance of a savage state. They were not dwellers