The myth of the Elysian fields--universally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought it a vision of another land--a land without care or grief--a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of the sun. A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods. Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had left its cards on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing of the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He did not dream of it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the land will be. The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, and it would save him in turn from his enemies. He did so, and put it into different receptacles until it grew so large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was large enough to take care of itself. The fish told him that there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of animals of use to man, and he would come along with an ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to its horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the ark to a tree. When the waters receded, they came out and followed them down until they reached the plain. There were the same number--eight--in this ark as there were with Noah.