Now, behold our ancients and our fathers were made lords, and had their dawn.  Behold we will relate also the rising of the sun, the moon, and the stars!  Great was their joy when they saw the morning-star, which came out first, with its resplendent face before the sun. At last the sun itself began to come forth; the animals, small and great, were in joy; they rose from the water-courses and ravines, and stood on the mountain-tops, with their heads toward where the sun was coming.  An innumerable crowd of people were there, and the dawn cast light on all these people at once.  At last the face of the ground was dried by the sun: like a man the sun showed himself, and his presence warmed and dried the surface of the ground.  Before the sun appeared, muddy and wet was the surface of the ground, and it was before the sun appeared, and then only the sun rose like a man. But his heat had no strength, and he did but show when he rose; he only remained like” (an image in) “a mirror and it is not, indeed, the same sun that appears now, they say, in the stories."[2]

[1.  “North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 214.

2.  Tylor’s “Early History of Mankind,” p. 308.]

{p. 219}

How wonderfully does all this accord with what we have shown would follow from the earth’s contact with a comet!

The earth is wet and covered with mud, the clay; the sun is long absent; at last he returns; he dries the mud, but his face is still covered with the remnants of the great cloud-belt; “his heat has no strength”; he shows himself only in glimpses; he shines through the fogs like an image in a mirror; he is not like the great blazing orb we see now.

But the sun, when it did appear in all its glory, must have been a terrible yet welcome sight to those who had not looked upon him for many years.  We read in the legends of the Thlinkeets of British Columbia, after narrating that the world was once “dark, damp, and chaotic,” full of water, with no sun, moon, or stars, how these luminaries were restored.  The great hero-god of the race, Yehl, got hold of three mysterious boxes, and, wrenching the lids off, let out the sun, moon, and stars.

“When he set up the blazing light” (of the sun) “in heaven, the people that saw it were at first afraid.  Many hid themselves in the mountains, and in the forests, and even in the water, and were changed into the various kinds of animals that frequent these places."[1]

Says James Geikie: 

“Nor can we form any proper conception of how long a time was needed to bring about that other change of climate, under the influence of which, slowly and imperceptibly, this immense sheet of frost melted away from the lowlands and retired to the mountain recesses.  We must allow that long ages elapsed before the warmth became such as to induce plants and animals to clothe and people the land.  How vast a time, also, must have passed away ere the warmth reached its climax!"[2]