Remnants of the three fetich-gods of Mr. Keary are preserved in later and more abstract cults, and may be largely found in Indo-European mythologies. The Greeks and Romans appear to have regarded rivers and mountains with particular favor, while the Celts and Teutons were more especially devoted to trees. The wells of knowledge and of magic and the fountains of youth which are met with in myth and legend are simply the narrowing to particular instances of the magic, the sacredness, and the healing gifts which were once universally attributed to streams. The monstrous python which Apollo encountered and destroyed at Delphi was, according to Mr. Keary, a river, and a harmful one,—the river of death. “The reptile was, we know,” says he, “before all things, sacred to Æsculapius, and was kept in his house, as, for example, in the great temple at Epidaurus. It would seem that the sun-god has the special mission of overcoming and absorbing unto himself this form of fetich. This is why Apollo slays the python, and why the snake is sacred to Æsculapius.”[226] Mr. Keary was by no means the first, I may say, to emphasize the association of serpents with rivers. The fact has been dwelt on by Dr. Brinton. Says this distinguished student of American archæology: “The sinuous course of the serpent is like nothing so much as that of a winding river; which, therefore, we often call serpentine. So did the Indians. Kennebec, a stream in Maine, in the Algonkin, means snake, and Antietam, the creek in Maryland of tragic celebrity, in an Iroquois dialect, has the same significance. How easily could savages, construing the figure literally, make the serpent a river- or water-god.”[227] I believe, however, that it would be a mistake to hold that the serpent was at any time exclusively a symbol of the river. Both Mr. Keary and Dr. Brinton say as much. In the old world, as well as in the new, it was widely recognized as a symbol of lightning, and believed to have power over wind and rain.