He slays the Phœnicians; “some he kills with his sting, some with his long folds, some breathed upon by the venom of his baleful poison.”

Cadmus casts a huge stone, as big as a millstone, against him, but it falls harmless upon his scales, “that were like a coat-of-mail”; then Cadmus pierced him with his spear.  In his fall he crushes the forests; the blood flows from his poisonous palate and changes the color of the grass.  He is slain.

Then, under the advice of Pallas, Cadmus sows the earth with the dragon’s teeth, “under the earth turned up, as the seeds of a future people.”  Afterward, the earth begins to move, and armed men rise up; they slay Cadmus, and then fight with and slay each other.

This seems to be a recollection of the comet, and the stones falling from heaven; and upon the land so afflicted

{p. 262}

subsequently a warlike and aggressive and quarrelsome race of men springs up.

In the contest of Hercules with the Lygians, on the road from Caucasus to the Hesperides, “there is an attempt to explain mythically the origin of the round quartz blocks in the Lygian field of stones, at the mouth of the Rhône."[1]

In the “Prometheus Delivered” of Æsechylus, Jupiter draws together a cloud, and causes “the district round about to be covered with a shower of round stones."[2]

The legends of Europe refer to a race buried under sand and earth: 

“The inhabitants of Central Europe and Teutonic races who came late to England, place their mythical heroes under ground in caves, in vaults beneath enchanted castles, or in mounds which open and show their buried inhabitants alive and busy about the avocations of earthly men. . . .  In Morayshire the buried race are supposed to have been buried under the sand-hills, as they are in some parts of Brittany."[3]

Turning again to America, we find, in the great prayer of the Aztecs to Tezcalipoca, {_Tezcatlipoca—­jbh_} given on page 186, ante, many references to some material substances falling from heaven; we read: 

“Thine anger and indignation has descended upon us in these days, . . . coming down even as stones, spears, and darts upon the wretches that inhabit the earth; this is the pestilence by which we are afflicted and almost destroyed.”  The children die, “broken and dashed to pieces as against stones and a wall. . . .  Thine anger and thy indignation does it delight in hurling the stone and arrow and spear.  The grinders of thy teeth” (the dragon’s teeth of Ovid?) “are employed, and thy bitter whips upon the miserable of

[1.  “Cosmos,” vol. i, p. 115.

2.  Ibid., p. 115.

3.  “Frost and Fire,” vol. ii, p. 190.]

{p. 263}

thy people....  Hast thou verily determined that it utterly perish; . . . that the peopled place become a wooded hill and a wilderness of stones? . . .  Is there to be no mercy nor pity for us until the arrows of thy fury are spent? . . .  Thine arrows and stones have sorely hurt this poor people.”