[1.  Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, p. 98]

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personal conflict between Ta-vi, the sun-god, and Ta-wats, one of the supreme gods of his mythology.

“In that, long ago, the time to which all mythology refers, the sun roamed the earth at will. When he came too near with his fierce heat the people were scorched, and when he hid away in his cave for a long time, too idle to come forth, the night was long and the earth cold.  Once upon a time Ta-wats, the hare-god, was sitting with his family by the camp-fire in the solemn woods, anxiously waiting for the return of Ta-vi, the wayward sun-god.  Wearied with long watching, the hare-god fell asleep, and the sun-god came so near that he scorched the naked shoulder of Ta-wats.  Foreseeing the vengeance which would be thus provoked, he fled back to his cave beneath the earth.  Ta-wats awoke in great anger, and speedily determined to go and fight the sun-god.  After a long journey of many adventures the hare-god came to the brink of the earth, and there watched long and patiently, till at last the sun-god coming out he shot an arrow at his face, but the fierce heat consumed the arrow ere it had finished its intended course; then another arrow was sped, but that also was consumed; and another, and still another, till only one remained in his quiver, but this was the magical arrow that had never failed its mark.  Ta-wats, holding it in his hand, lifted the barb to his eye and baptized it in a divine tear; then the arrow was sped and struck the sun-god full in the face, and the sun was shivered into a thousand fragments, which fell to the earth, causing a general conflagration.  Then Ta-wats, the hare-god, fled before the destruction he had wrought, and as he fled the burning earth consumed his feet, consumed his legs, consumed his body, consumed his bands and his arms—­all were consumed but the head alone, which bowled across valleys and over mountains, fleeing destruction from the burning earth, until at last, swollen with heat, the eyes of the god burst and the tears gushed forth in a flood which spread over the earth and extinguished the fire.  The sun-god was now conquered, and he appeared before a council of the gods to await sentence.  In that long council were established the days and the nights, the seasons and the years, with the length

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thereof, and the sun was condemned to travel across the firmament by the same trail day after day till the end of time."[1]

Here we have the succession of arrows, or comets, found in the legend of the Aztecs, and here as before it is the last arrow that destroys the sun.  And here, again, we have the conflagration, the fragments of something falling on the earth, the long absence of the sun, the great rains and the cold.

Let us shift the scene again.

In Peru—­that ancient land of mysterious civilization, that brother of Egypt and Babylon, looking out through the twilight of time upon the silent waters of the Pacific, waiting in its isolation for the world once more to come to it-in this strange land we find the following legend: