wooden mannikins.
This unsatisfactory race was destroyed by a rain of resin and by the
wild beasts. The survivors developed into apes. Next came a period
occupied by the wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and
of animals. The record is like the description of a supernatural
pantomime--the nightmare of a god. The Titans upset hills, are turned
into stone, and behave like Heitsi Eibib in the Namaqua myths.

Last of all, men were made of yellow and white maize, and these gave
more satisfaction, but their sight was contracted. These, however,
survived, and became the parents of the present stock of humanity.

Here we have the conceptions of creation and of evolution combined. Men
are MADE, but only the fittest survive; the rest are either destroyed or
permitted to develop into lower species. A similar mixture of the same
ideas will be found in one of the Brahmanas among the Aryans of India.
It is to be observed that the Quiche myths, as recorded in Popol Vuh,
contain not only traces of belief in a creative word and power, but many
hymns of a lofty and beautifully devotional character.

"Hail! O Creator, O Former! Thou that hearest and understandest us,
abandon us not, forsake us not! O God, thou that art in heaven and on
the earth, O Heart of Heaven, O Heart of Earth, give us descendants and
posterity as long as the light endures."

This is an example of the prayers of the men made out of maize, made
especially that they might "call on the name" of the god or gods.
Whether we are to attribute this and similar passages to Christian
influence (for Popol Vuh, as we have it, is but an attempt to collect
the fragments of the lost book that remained in men's minds after the
conquest), or whether the purer portions of the myth be due to untaught
native reflection and piety, it is not possible to determine. It is
improbable that the ideas of a hostile race would be introduced into
religious hymns by their victims. Here, as elsewhere in the sacred
legends of civilised peoples, various strata of mythical and religious
thought coexist.

No American people reached such a pitch of civilisation as the Aztecs
of Anahuac, whose capital was the city of Mexico. It is needless here
to repeat the story of their grandeur and their fall. Obscure as their
history, previous to the Spanish invasion, may be, it is certain that
they possessed a highly organised society, fortified towns, established
colleges or priesthoods, magnifice