Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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{p. 215}

was restored, as at the first, and the Miztec kingdom populated, and
the heavens and the earth established."[1]

Father Duran, in his MS. "History Antique of New Spain," written in
A. D. 1585, gives the Cholula legend, which commences:

"In the beginning, _before the light of the sun_ had been created,
this land was _in obscurity and darkness_ and void of any created
thing."

In the Toltec legends we read of a time when--

"There was a tremendous hurricane that carried away trees, mounds,
houses, and the largest edifices, notwithstanding which many men and
women escaped, _principally in caves_, and places where the great
hurricane could not reach them. A few days having passed, they set
out to see what had become of the earth, when they found it all
populated with monkeys. All this time they were in darkness, _without
seeing the light of the sun, nor the moon, that the wind had brought
them_."[2]

In the Aztec creation-myths, according to the accounts furnished by
Mendieta, and derived from Fray Andres de Olmos, one of the earliest
of the Christian missionaries among the Mexicans, we have the
following legend of the "Return of the Sun":

"_Now, there had been no sun in existence for many years;_ so the
gods being assembled in a place called Teotihuacan, six leagues from
Mexico, and gathered at the time _around a great fire_, told their
devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that,
fire should have the honor of being transformed into a sun. So, one
of them, called Nanahuatzin . . . flung himself into the fire. Then
the gods" (the chiefs?) "began to peer through the gloom in all
directions _for the expected light_, and to make bets as to what part
of heaven. he should

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, pp. 71-73.

2. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 239.]

{p. 216}

first appear in. Some said 'Here,' and some said 'There'; but when
the sun rose they were all proved wrong, for not one of them had
fixed upon the east."

In the long-continued darkness they had lost all knowledge of the
cardinal points. The ancient landmarks, too, were changed.

The "Popul Vuh," the national book of the Quiches, tells us of four
ages of the world. The man of the first age was made of clay; he was
"strengthless, inept, watery; he could not move his head, his face
looked but one way; his sight was restricted, he could not look
behind him," that is, he had no knowledge of the past; "he had been
endowed with language, but he had no intelligence, so he was consumed
in the water."[1]

Then followed a higher race of men; they filled the world with their
progeny; they had intelligence, but _no moral sense_"; "they forgot
the Heart of Heaven." They were _destroyed by fire and pitch from
heaven_, accompanied by tremendous earthquakes, from which only a few
escaped.

Then followed a period _when all was dark_, save the white light "of
the morning-star--sole light as yet of the primeval world"--probably
a volcano.

"Once more are the gods in council, _in the darkness, in the night of
a desolated universe_."

Then the people prayed to God for light, evidently for the return of
the sun:

"'Hail! O Creator they cried, 'O Former! Thou that hearest and
understandest us! abandon us not! forsake us not! O God, thou that
art in heaven and on earth; O Heart of Heaven I O Heart of Earth!
_give us descendants, and a posterity as long as the light endure_.'"
. . .

In other words, let not the human race cease to be.

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 46.]

{p. 217}

"It was thus they spake, living tranquilly, _invoking the return of
the light; waiting the rising of the sun;_ watching the star of the
morning, precursor of the sun. But no sun came, and the four men and
their descendants grew uneasy. 'We have no person to watch over us,'
they said; 'nothing to guard our symbols!' Then they adopted gods of
their own, and waited. They kindled fires, _for the climate was
colder;_ then there fell _great rains and hail-storms,_ and put out
their fires. Several times they made fires, and several times the
rains and storms extinguished them. Many other trials also they
underwent in Tulan, famines and such things, and _a general dampness
and cold_--for the earth was _moist, there being yet no sun_."

All this accords with what I have shown we might expect as
accompanying the close of the so-called Glacial Age. Dense clouds
covered the sky, shutting out the light of the sun; perpetual rains
and storms fell; the world was cold and damp, muddy and miserable;
the people were wanderers, despairing and hungry. They seem to have
come from an eastern land. We are told:

"Tulan was a much colder climate than the happy eastern land they had
left."

Many generations seem to have grown up and perished under the sunless
skies, "waiting for the return of the light"; for the "Popul Vuh"
tells us that "here also the language of all the families was
confused, so that no one of the first four men could any longer
understand the speech of the others."

That is to say, separation and isolation into rude tribes had made
their tongues unintelligible to one another.

This shows that many, many years--it may be centuries--must have
elapsed before that vast volume of moisture, carried up by
evaporation, was able to fall

{p. 218}

back, in snow and rain to the land and sea, and allow the sun to
shine through "the blanket of the dark." Starvation encountered the
scattered fragments of mankind.

And in these same Quiche legends of Central America we are told:

"The persons of the godhead were enveloped in the _darkness which
enshrouded a desolated world_."[1]

They counseled together, and created four men of white and yellow
maize (the white and yellow races?). It was _still dark;_ for they
had no light but the light of the morning-star. They came to Tulan.

And the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg gives further details of the
Quiche legends:

Now, behold our ancients and our fathers were made lords, and _had
their dawn_. Behold we will relate also the rising of the sun, the
moon, and the stars! Great was their joy when they saw the
morning-star, which came out first, with its resplendent face before
the sun. _At last_ the sun itself began to come forth; the animals,
small and great, were in joy; they rose from the water-courses and
ravines, and stood on the mountain-tops, with their heads toward
where the sun was coming. An innumerable crowd of people were there,
and the dawn cast light on all these people at once. At last _the
face of the ground was dried by the sun:_ like a man the sun showed
himself, and his presence warmed and dried the surface of the ground.
Before the sun appeared, _muddy and wet_ was the surface of the
ground, and it was before the sun appeared, and then only the sun
rose like a man. _But his heat had no strength_, and he _did but show
when he rose;_ he only remained like" (an image in) "a mirror and it
is not, indeed, the same sun that appears now, they say, in the
stories."[2]

[1. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 214.

2. Tylor's "Early History of Mankind," p. 308.]

{p. 219}

How wonderfully does all this accord with what we have shown would
follow from the earth's contact with a comet!

The earth is wet and covered with mud, the clay; the sun is long
absent; at last he returns; he dries the mud, but his face is still
covered with the remnants of the great cloud-belt; "his heat has no
strength"; he shows himself only in glimpses; he shines through the
fogs like an image in a mirror; he is not like the great blazing orb
we see now.

But the sun, when it did appear in all its glory, must have been a
terrible yet welcome sight to those who had not looked upon him for
many years. We read in the legends of the Thlinkeets of British
Columbia, after narrating that the world was once "dark, damp, and
chaotic," full of water, with no sun, moon, or stars, how these
luminaries were restored. The great hero-god of the race, Yehl, got
hold of three mysterious boxes, and, wrenching the lids off, let out
the sun, moon, and stars.

"When he set up the blazing light" (of the sun) "in heaven, the
people that saw it were at first afraid. Many hid themselves in the
mountains, and in the forests, and even in the water, and were
changed into the various kinds of animals that frequent these
places."[1]

Says James Geikie:

"Nor can we form any proper conception of how long a time was needed
to bring about that other change of climate, under the influence of
which, slowly and imperceptibly, this immense sheet of frost melted
away from the lowlands and retired to the mountain recesses. We must
allow that long ages elapsed before the warmth became such as to
induce plants and animals to clothe and people the land. How vast a
time, also, must have passed away ere the warmth reached its
climax!"[2]

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 100.

2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 184.]

{p. 220}

And all this time the rain fell. There could be no return of the sun
until all the mass of moisture sucked up by the comet's heat had been
condensed into water, and falling on the earth had found its way back
to the ocean; and this process had to be repeated many times. It was
the age of the great primeval rain.

###

THE PRIMEVAL STORM.

In the Andes, Humboldt tells us of a somewhat similar state of facts:

"A thick mist during a particular season obscures the firmament for
many months. Not a planet, not the most brilliant stars of the
southern hemisphere--Canopus, the

{p. 221}

Southern Cross, nor the feet of Centaur--are visible. It is
frequently almost impossible to discover the position of the moon. If
by chance the outlines of the sun's disk be visible during the day,
it appears devoid of rays."

Says Croll:

"We have seen that the accumulation of snow and ice on the ground,
resulting from the long and cold winters, tended to cool the air and
produce fogs, which cut off the sun's rays."[1]

The same writer says:

"Snow and ice lower the temperature by chilling the air and
condensing the rays into thick fogs. The great strength of the sun's
rays during summer, due to his nearness at that season, would, in the
first place, tend to produce an increased amount of evaporation. But
the presence of snow-clad mountains and an icy sea would chill the
atmosphere and condense the vapors into thick fogs. The thick fogs
and cloudy sky would effectually prevent the sun's rays from reaching
the earth, and the snow, in consequence, would remain unmelted during
the entire summer. In fact, we have this very condition of things
exemplified in some of the islands of the Southern Ocean at the
present day. Sandwich Land, which is in the same parallel of latitude
as the north of Scotland, is covered with ice and snow the entire
summer; and in the Island of South Georgia, which is in the same
parallel as the center of England, the perpetual snow descends to the
very sea-beach. The following is Captain Cook's description of this
dismal place: 'We thought it very extraordinary,' he says, 'that an
island between the latitudes of 54° and 55° should, in the very
height of summer, be almost wholly covered with frozen snow, in some
places many fathoms deep. . . . The head of the bay was terminated by
ice-cliffs of considerable height, pieces of which were continually
breaking off, which made a noise like cannon. Nor were the interior
parts of the country less horrible. The savage rocks raised their
lofty summits

[1. "Climate and Time," p. 75.]

{p. 222}

till lost in the clouds, and valleys were covered with seemingly
perpetual snow. Not a tree nor a shrub of any size was to be seen.'"

I return to the legends.

The Gallinomeros of Central California also recollect the day of
darkness and the return of the sun:

"In the beginning they say there was _no light, but a thick darkness
covered all the earth_. Man stumbled blindly against man and against
the animals, the birds clashed together in the air, and confusion
reigned everywhere. The Hawk happening by chance to fly into the face
of the Coyote, there followed mutual apologies, and afterward a long
discussion on the emergency of the situation. Determined to make some
effort toward abating the public evil, the two set about a remedy.
The Coyote gathered a great heap, of tules" (rushes) "rolled them
into a ball, and gave it to the Hawk, together with some pieces of
flint. Gathering all together as well as he could, the Hawk flew
straight up into the sky, where he struck fire with the flints, lit
his ball of reeds, and left it there whirling along all in a fierce
red glow as it continues to the present; for it is the sun. In the
same way the moon was made, but as the tules of which it was
constructed were rather damp, its light has always been somewhat
uncertain and feeble."[2]

The Algonquins believed in a world, an earth, "anterior to this of
ours, but one _without light or human inhabitants_. A lake burst its
bounds and submerged it wholly."

This reminds us of the Welsh legend, and the bursting of the lake
Llion (see page 135, _ante_).

The ancient world was united in believing in great cycles of time
terminating in terrible catastrophes:

[1. Captain Cook's "Second Voyage," vol. ii, pp. 232-235;

2. "Climate and Time," Croll, pp. 60, 61.

3. Powers's Pomo MS., Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 86.]

{p. 223}

Hence arose the belief in Epochs of Nature, elaborated by ancient
philosophers into the Cycles of the Stoics, the great Days of Brahm,
long periods of time rounding off by sweeping destructions, the
Cataclysms and Ekpyrauses of the universe. Some thought in these all
things perished, others that a few survived. . . . For instance,
Epietetus favors the opinion that at the solstices of the great year
not only all human beings, but even the gods, are annihilated; and
speculates whether at such times Jove feels lonely.[1] Macrobius, so
far from agreeing with him, explains the great antiquity of Egyptian
civilization by the hypothesis that that country is so happily
situated between the pole and the equator, as to escape both the
deluge and conflagration of the great cycle."[2]

In the Babylonian Genesis tablets we have the same references to the
man or people who, after the great disaster, divided the heavens into
constellations, and regulated, that is, discovered and revealed,
their movements. In the Fifth Tablet of the Creation Legend[3] we
read:

"1. It was delightful all that was fixed by the great gods.

2. Stars, their appearance (in figures) of animals he arranged.

3. To fix the year through the observation of their constellations,

4. Twelve months or signs of stars in three rows he arranged,

5. From the day when the year commences unto the close.

6. He marked the positions of the wandering stars to shine in their
courses,

7. That they may not do injury, and may not trouble any one."

That is to say, the civilized race that followed the great cataclysm,
with whom the history of the event was

[1. Discourses," book iii, chapter xiii.

2. Brinton's Myths of the New World," p. 215.

3. Proctor's Pleasant Ways," p. 393.]

{p. 224}

yet fresh, and who were impressed with all its horrors, and who knew
well the tenure of danger and terror on which they held all the
blessings of the world, turned their attention to the study of the
heavenly bodies, and sought to understand the source of the calamity
which had so recently overwhelmed the world. Hence they "marked," as
far as they were able, "the positions of the 'comets,'" "that they
might not" again "do injury, and not trouble any one." The word here
given is _Nibir_, which Mr. Smith says does not mean planets, and, in
the above account, _Nibir_ is contradistinguished from the stars;
they have already been arranged in constellations; hence it can only
mean comets.

And the tablet proceeds, with distinct references to the Age of
Darkness:

"8. The positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with him,

9. And _he opened the great gates in the darkness shrouded_.

10. The fastenings were strong on the left and right.

11. In its mass, (i. e., the lower chaos,) he made a _boiling_.

12. The god Uru (the moon) _he caused to rise out_, the _night he
overshadowed_,

13. To fix it also for the light of the night until the shining of
the day.

14. That the month might not be broken, and in its amount be regular,

15. At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night,

16. His (the sun's) horns are breaking through to shine on the
heavens.

17. On the seventh day _to a circle he begins to swell_,

18. And stretches _toward the dawn further_,

19. When the god Shamas, (the in the horizon of heaven, in the east,

20 . . . . formed beautifully and . . .

21 . . . . to the orbit Shamas was perfected."

{p. 225}

Here the tablet becomes illegible. The meaning, however, seems plain:

Although to left and right, to east and west, the darkness was
fastened firm, was dense, yet "the great gods opened the great gates
in the darkness," and let the light through. First, the moon
appeared, through a "boiling," or breaking up of the clouds, so that
now men were able to once more count time by the movements of the
moon. On the seventh day, Shamas, the sun, appeared; first, his
horns, his beams, broke through the darkness imperfectly; then he
swells to a circle, and comes nearer and nearer to perfect dawn; at
last he appeared on the horizon, in the east, formed beautifully, and
his orbit was perfected; i. e., his orbit could be traced
continuously through the clearing heavens.

But how did the human race fare in this miserable time?

In his magnificent poem "Darkness," Byron has imagined such a blind
and darkling world as these legends depict; and he has imagined, too,
the hunger, and the desolation, and the degradation of the time.

We are not to despise the imagination. There never was yet a great
thought that had not wings to it; there never was yet a great mind
that did not survey things from above the mountain-tops.

If Bacon built the causeway over which modern science has advanced,
it was because, mounting on the pinions of his magnificent
imagination, he saw that poor struggling mankind needed such a
pathway; his heart embraced humanity even as his brain embraced the
universe.

The river which is a boundary to the rabbit, is but a landmark to the
eagle. Let not the gnawers of the world, the rodentia, despise the
winged creatures of the upper air.

{p. 226}

Byron saw what the effects of the absence of the sunlight would
necessarily be upon the world, and that which he prefigured the
legends of mankind tell us actually came to pass, in the dark days
that followed the Drift.

He says:

"Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation, and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light. . . .
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded,--and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash,--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And bid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clinchèd hands and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled. . . .
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again--a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom, . . . and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails;--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh
The meager by the meager were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters."

How graphic, how dramatic, how realistic is this picture! And how
true!

For the legends show us that when, at last, the stones and clay had
ceased to fall, and the fire had exhausted itself, and the remnant of
mankind were able to dig their way out, to what an awful wreck of
nature did they return.

{p . 227}

Instead of the fair face of the world, as they had known it, bright
with sunlight, green with the magnificent foliage of the forest, or
the gentle verdure of the plain, they go forth upon a wasted, an
unknown land, covered with oceans of mud and stones; the very face of
the country changed--lakes, rivers, hills, all swept away and lost.
They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, under the
shadow of an awful darkness, a darkness which knows no morning, no
stars, no moon; a darkness palpable and visible, lighted only by
electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars of
thunder as we, in this day of harmonious nature, can form no
conception of. It is, indeed, "chaos and ancient night." All the
forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling
against each other, and multiplied a thousand-fold in power; the
winds are cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling.

The world is more desolate than the caves from which they have
escaped. The forests are gone; the fruit-trees are swept away; the
beasts of the chase have perished; the domestic animals, gentle
ministers to man, have disappeared; the cultivated fields are buried
deep in drifts of mud and gravel; the people stagger in the darkness
against each other; they fall into the chasms of the earth; within
them are the two great oppressors of humanity, hunger and terror;
hunger that knows not where to turn; fear that shrinks before the
whirling blasts, the rolling thunder, the shocks of blinding
lightning; that knows not what moment the heavens may again open and
rain fire and stones and dust upon them.

God has withdrawn his face; his children are deserted; all the,
kindly adjustments of generous Nature are gone. God has left man in
the midst of a material world without law; he is a wreck, a fragment,
a lost particle,

{p. 228}

in the midst of an illimitable and endless warfare of giants.

Some lie down to die, hopeless, cursing their helpless gods; some die
by their own bands; some gather around the fires of volcanoes for
warmth and light--stars that attract them from afar off; some feast
on such decaying remnants of the great animals as they may find
projecting above the _débris_, running to them, as we shall see, with
outcries, and fighting over the fragments.

The references to the worship of "the morning star," which occur in
the legend, seem to relate to some great volcano in the East, which
alone gave light when all the world was lost in darkness. As Byron
says, in his great poem, "Darkness":

And they did live by watch-fires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crownèd kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were they _who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain-torch_."

In this pitiable state were once the ancestors of all mankind.

If you doubt it, reader, peruse again the foregoing legends, and then
turn to the following Central American prayer, the prayer of the
Aztecs, already referred to on page 186, _ante_, addressed to the god
Tezcatlipoca, himself represented as a flying or winged serpent,
perchance the comet:

"Is it possible that this lash and chastisement are not given for our
correction and amendment, but only for our total destruction and
overthrow; that _the sun will never more shine upon us, but that we
must remain in perpetual darkness?_ . . . It is a sore thing to tell
how we are all in

{p. 229}

darkness. . . . O Lord, . . . make an end of _this smoke and fog_.
Quench also the _burning and destroying fire of thine anger_; let
serenity come and _clearness_," (light); "let the small birds of thy
people begin to sing and _approach the sun_."

There is still another Aztec prayer, addressed to the same deity,
equally able, sublime, and pathetic, which it seems to me may have
been uttered when the people had left their biding-place, when the
conflagration had passed, but while darkness still covered the earth,
before vegetation had returned, and while crops of grain as yet were
not. There are a few words in it that do not answer to this
interpretation, where it refers to those "people who have something";
but there may have been comparative differences of condition even in
the universal poverty; or these words may have been an interpolation
of later days. The prayer is as follows:

"O our Lord, protector most strong and compassionate, invisible and
impalpable, thou art the giver of life; lord of all, and lord of
battles. I present myself here before thee to say some few words
concerning the need of the poor people of none estate or
intelligence. When they lie down at night they have nothing, nor when
they rise up in the morning; the darkness and the light pass alike in
great poverty. Know, O Lord, that thy subjects and servants suffer a
sore poverty that can not be told of more than that it is a sore
poverty and desolateness. The men have no garments, nor the women, to
cover themselves with, but only certain rags rent in every part, that
allow the air and the cold to pass everywhere.

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