roros to run for their
lives. The water was touching his feet, when he thought of a novel
expedient. He began to remove the red-hot stones which had lain under the
fire and threw them right and left into the water. By rapid evaporation
at the contact of the hot missiles, it is to be presumed, as the legend
does not say, the water ceased to rise. In fact, the water gradually
retired, and the Bororo eventually returned to the spot where he had left
the tribesmen. All were dead. He went one day into the forest and he
found a doe--which had in some mysterious way escaped death--and he took
her for his wife. From this strange union were born children who were
hornless and quite human, except that they were very hairy. After a few
generations the hair entirely disappeared. That was how the Bororo race
was preserved."

That extraordinary legend was, to my mind, a very interesting one--not in
itself, but from several facts which in its ignorant language it
contained. First of all, the knowledge of the Bororos concerning a former
hairy race--a hairy race referred to in legends found all over the
Eastern Asiatic coast and on many of the islands in the Pacific from the
Kuriles as far as Borneo. Then it would clearly suggest a great deluge
and flood which most certainly took place in South America in days long
gone by, and was indeed quelled by burning stones--not, of course, thrown
by the hands of a Bororo, from the summit of a mountain, but by a great
volcanic eruption spitting fire and molten rocks.

As I have stated elsewhere, there was every possible indication in
Central Brazil that torrential rains on an inconceivable scale--naturally
followed by unparalleled floods--had taken place, in the company of or
followed by volcanic activity on a scale beyond all imagination. One had
only to turn one's head round and gaze at the scenery almost anywhere in
Central Brazil, but in Matto Grosso particularly, to notice to what
extent erosion and volcanic activity had done their work.

Another curious belief of the Bororos was worth remembering. They claimed
that men and women did not come from monkeys, but that once upon a time
monkeys were human and could speak. They lived in huts and slept in
hammocks.

The Bororos possessed no geographical knowledge. Beyond their immediate
neighbourhood they knew of no other place, and did not in any way realize
the shape or size of the earth.

They called themselves _Orari nogu doghe_--or people