l was held for the determination of
the true Middle.... According to a myth the Sun-father requested the
water-skate to determine the Middle. This mythical monster lifted himself
up, stretched out and then settled downward, calling out: "Where my heart
and navel rest beneath them mark ye the spot and then build ye a town of
the midmost, for there shall be the midmost of the Earth-mother, even the
navel.... And when he descended squatting, his belly rested over the plain
and valley of Zuni and when he drew in his finger-legs, lo! there were the
trail roads leading out and in like the stays of a spider's net, into and
forth from the place he had covered."

Pausing to point out that fig. 28, reproduced from Mexican Codices, shows
curious topographical drawings resembling a spider's net, I will not
recount the many disappointments of the wanderers, who were evidently
driven away from several places of settlement by earthquakes, but will
refer to the Zuni custom of "annually testing the stability of the Middle
in middle time ... when the sun reached the middle between winter and
summer ... a shell was laid by the sacred fire of the north.... When
during solemn chanting no trembling of the earth ensued, the priests cast
new fire and ... dwelt happily feeling sure that their sacred things were
resting in the stable middle of the world."

At the beginning of this paper I referred to the powerful hold that the
realization of the fixity of the pole star would naturally have exerted
upon the mind of primitive man, and I can produce no more striking
illustration of this and of my view that the idea of central government
and organization had been suggested by Polaris, than this account of the
earnest and prolonged search of these ancient people for the stable centre
of the earth, on which to found a permanent centre of terrestrial rule or
the plan of the celestial government. At the same time it seems to me that
the longing for a stable and fixed residence would naturally have been
most intense amongst people who had experienced terrible earthquakes and
been driven out of their original abodes by their repeated destruction. It
is unnecessary to mention the well-known fact that whilst earthquakes
prevail throughout North and Central America, the most impressive trace of
catastrophes of the kind are connected with the gigantic volcanoes of
Central Mexico and Guatemala.

With a sympathetic insight into the disasters which seem to have