[1.  Tylor’s “Early Mankind,” p. 308.]

{p. 378}

The abbé adds: 

“But it is not clear how they crossed the sea; they passed as though there had been no sea, for they passed over scattered rocks, and these rocks were rolled on the sands.  This is why they called the place ‘ranged stones and torn-up sands,’ the name which they gave it in their passage within the sea, the water being divided when they passed.”

They probably migrated along that one of the connecting ridges which, the sea-soundings show us, stretched from Atlantis to the coast of South America.

We have seen in the Hindoo legends that when Rama went to the Island of Lanka to fight the demon Ravana, he built a bridge of stone, sixty miles long, with the help of the monkey-god, in order to reach the island.

In Ovid we read of the “settling down a little” of the island on which the drama of Phaëton was enacted.

In the Norse legends the bridge Bifrost cuts an important figure.  One would be at first disposed to regard it as meaning, (as is stated in what are probably later interpolations,) the rainbow; but we see, upon looking closely, that it represents a material fact, an actual structure of some kind.

Gylfe, who was, we are told, A king of Sweden in the ancient days, visited Asgard.  He assumed the name of Ganglere, (the walker or wanderer).  I quote from the “Younger Edda, The Creation”: 

“Then asked Ganglere, ‘What is the path from earth to heaven?’”

The earth here means, I take it, the European colonies which surround the ocean, which in turn surrounds Asgard; heaven is the land of the godlike race, Asgard.  Ganglere therefore asks what is, or was, in the mythological past, the pathway from Europe to the Atlantic island.

{p. 379}

“Har answered, laughing, ’Foolishly do you now ask.  Have you not been told that the gods made a bridge from earth to heaven, which is called Bifrost?  You must have seen it.  It may be that you call it the rainbow.  It has three colors, is very strong, and is made with more craft and skill than other structures.  Still, however strong it is, it will break when the sons of Muspel come to ride over it, and then they will have to swim their horses over great rivers in order to get on.’”

Muspel is the blazing South, the land of fire, of the convulsions that accompanied the comet.  But how can Bifrost mean the rainbow?  What rivers intersect a rainbow?

“Then said Ganglere, ’The gods did not, it seems to me, build that bridge honestly, if it shall be able to break to pieces, since they could have done so if they had desired.’  Then made answer Har:  ’The gods are worthy of no blame for this structure.  Bifrost is indeed a good bridge, but there is nothing in the world that is able to stand when the sons of Muspel come to the fight.’”

Muspel here means, I repeat, the heat of the South.  Mere heat has no effect on rainbows.  They are the product of sunlight and falling water, and are often most distinct in the warmest weather.