“In traveling from the shores of the Eastern Sea toward Che-lu, neither brooks nor ponds are met with in the country, although it is intersected by mountains and valleys.  Nevertheless, there are found in the sand, very far away from the sea, oyster-shells and the shields of crabs.  The tradition of the Mongols who inhabit the country is, that it has been said from time immemorial that in a

[1.  Tyler’s “Early Mankind,” p. 224.

2.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 197.

3.  Ibid., p. 197.

4.  Ibid., p. 198.]

{p. 260}

remote antiquity the waters of the deluge flooded the district, and when they retired the places where they had been made their appearance covered with sand. . . .  This is why these deserts are called the ‘Sandy Sea,’ which indicates that they were not always covered with sand and gravel."[1]

In the Russian legends, a “golden ship sails across the heavenly sea; it breaks into fragments, which neither princes nor people can put together again,”—­reminding one of Humpty-Dumpty, in the nursery-song, who, when he fell from his elevated position on the wall—­

     “Not all the king’s horses,
     Nor all the king’s men,
     Can ever make whole again.”

In another Russian legend, Perun, the thunder-god, destroys the devils with stone hammers.  On Ilya’s day, the peasants offer him a roasted animal, which is cut up and scattered over the fields,[2] just as we have seen the great dragon or serpent cut to pieces and scattered over the world.

Mr. Christy found at Bou-Merzoug, on the plateau of the Atlas, in Northern Africa, in a bare, deserted, stony place among the mountains, a collection of fifteen hundred tombs, made of rude limestone slabs, set up with one slab to form a roof, so as to make perfect dolmens—­closed chambers—­where the bodies were packed in.

“Tradition says that a wicked people lived there, and for their sins stones were rained upon them from heaven; so they built these chambers to creep into."[3]

In addition to the legend of “Phaëton,” already given, Ovid derived from the legends of his race another story,

[1.  Tylor’s “Early Mankind,” p. 328.

2.  Poor, “Sanskrit Literature,” p. 400.

3.  Tylor’s “Early Mankind,” p. 222.]

{p. 261}

which seems to have had reference to the same event.  He says (Fable XI): 

“After the men who came from the Tyrian nation had touched this grove with ill-fated steps, and the urn let down into the water made a splash, the azure dragon stretched forth his head from the deep cave, and uttered dreadful hissings.”

We are reminded of the flying monster of Hesiod, which roared and hissed so terribly.

Ovid continues: 

“The urns dropped from their hands, and the blood left their bodies, and a sudden trembling seized their astonished limbs.  He wreathes his scaly orbs in rolling spirals, and, with a spring, becomes twisted into mighty folds; and, uprearing himself from below the middle into the light air, he looks down upon all the grove, and is of” (as) “large size, as, if you were to look on him entire, the serpent which separates the two Bears” (the constellations).