The prayer of Irin Magé, when he calls on God to save the garniture of the heavens, reminds one vividly of the prayer of the Earth in Ovid.

It might be inferred that heaven meant in the Tupi legend the heavenly land, not the skies; this is rendered the more probable because we find Irin asking where should he dwell if heaven is destroyed.  This could scarcely allude to a spiritual heaven.

And here I would note a singular coincidence:  The fire that fell from heaven was the divine tata.  In Egypt the Dame of deity was “ta-ta,” or “pta-pta,” which signified father.  This became in the Hebrew “ya-ya,” from which we derive the root of Jah, Jehovah.  And this word is found in many languages in Europe and America, and even in our own, as, “da-da,” “daddy,” father.  The Tupi “tata” was fire from the supreme father.

Who can doubt the oneness of the human race, when millions of threads of tradition and language thus cross each other through it in all directions, like the web of a mighty fabric?

We cross from one continent to another, from the torrid part of South America to the frozen regions of North America, and the same legend meets us.

[1.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 227.]

{p. 177}

The Tacullies of British Columbia believe that the earth was formed by a musk-rat, who, diving into the universal sea, brought up the land in his mouth and spit it out, until he had formed “quite an island, and, by degrees, the whole earth”: 

“In some unexplained way, this earth became afterward peopled in every part, and it remained, until a fierce fire, of several days’ duration, swept over it, destroying all life, with two exceptions; one man and one woman hid themselves in a deep cave in the heart of a mountain, and from these two has the world since been repeopled."[1]

Brief as is this narrative, it preserves the natural sequence of events:  First, the world is made; then it becomes peopled in every part; then a fierce fire sweeps over it for several days, consuming all life, except two persons, who save themselves by hiding in a deep cave; and from these the world is repeopled.  How wonderfully does all this resemble the Scandinavian story!

It has oftentimes been urged, by the skeptical, when legends of Noah’s flood were found among rude races, that they had been derived from Christian missionaries.  But these myths can not be accounted for in this way; for the missionaries did not teach that the world was once destroyed by fire, and that a remnant of mankind escaped by taking refuge in a cave; although, as we shall see, such a legend really appears in several places hidden in the leaves of the Bible itself.

We leave the remote north and pass down the Pacific coast until we encounter the Ute Indians of California and Utah.  This is their legend: 

“The Ute philosopher declares the sun to be a living personage, and explains his passage across the heavens along an appointed way by giving an account of a fierce