ther and thither until it grew to a
continent, the giant Ymir, the rustler (as wind in trees), from whose
flesh, says the Edda, our globe was made and set to float like a speck
in the vast sea between Muspel and Niflheim, all are the same tale
repeated by different nations in different ages. But why take
illustrations from the old world when they are so plenty in the new?

Before the creation, said the Muscogees, a great body of water was alone
visible. Two pigeons flew to and fro over its waves, and at last spied a
blade of grass rising above the surface. Dry land gradually followed,
and the islands and continents took their present shapes.[195-2] Whether
this is an authentic aboriginal myth, is not beyond question. No such
doubt attaches to that of the Athapascas. With singular unanimity, most
of the northwest branches of this stock trace their descent from a
raven, "a mighty bird, whose eyes were fire, whose glances were
lightning, and the clapping of whose wings was thunder. On his descent
to the ocean, the earth instantly rose, and remained on the surface of
the water. This omnipotent bird then called forth all the variety of
animals."[196-1]

Very similar, but with more of poetic finish, is the legend of the
Quiches:--

"This is the first word and the first speech. There were neither men nor
brutes; neither birds, fish, nor crabs, stick nor stone, valley nor
mountain, stubble nor forest, nothing but the sky. The face of the land
was hidden. There was naught but the silent sea and the sky. There was
nothing joined, nor any sound, nor thing that stirred; neither any to do
evil, nor to rumble in the heavens, nor a walker on foot; only the
silent waters, only the pacified ocean, only it in its calm. Nothing was
but stillness, and rest, and darkness, and the night; nothing but the
Maker and Moulder, the Hurler, the Bird-Serpent. In the waters, in a
limpid twilight, covered with green feathers, slept the mothers and the
fathers."[196-2]

Over this passed Hurakan, the mighty wind, and called out Earth! and
straightway the solid land was there.

The picture writings of the Mixtecs preserved a similar cosmogony: "In
the year and in the day of clouds, before ever were either years or
days, the world lay in darkness; all things were orderless, and a water
covered the slime and the ooze that the earth then was." By the efforts
of two winds, called, from astrological associations, that of Nine
Serpents and that of Nine C