Abundant evidence proves that the large marine shells were regarded with superstitious reverence, alike by the more civilised nations of the land around the Gulf, and by others even so far north as beyond the shores of the great Canadian Lakes. In the latter case it is not difficult to account for the origin of such a feeling among tribes familiar only with small native fresh-water shells. But in one of the singular migratory scenes of the ancient Mexican paintings, copied from the Mendoza Collection,[53] in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, a native, barefooted, and dressed in a short spotted tunic reaching to his loins, bears in his right hand a spear, toothed round the blade, it may be presumed with points of obsidian, and in his left hand a large univalve shell. A river, which he is passing, is indicated by a greenish stripe winding obliquely across the drawing, and his track, as shown by alternate footprints, has previously crossed the same stream. On this trail he is followed by other figures nearly similarly dressed, but sandalled, and bearing spears and large fans; while a second group approaches the river by a different trail, and in an opposite direction to the shell-bearer. Other details of this curious fragment of pictorial history are less easily interpreted. An altar or a temple appears to be represented on one side of the stream; and a highly-coloured circular figure on the other, may be the epitomised symbol of some Achæan land or Sacred Elis of the New World. But whatever be the interpretation of the ancient hieroglyphic painting, its general correspondence with other migratory depictions is undoubted; and it is worthy of note, that, in some respects, the most prominent of all the figures is the one represented fording the stream, and bearing a large tropical univalve in his hand. The evidence thus afforded of an importance attached to the large sea-shells of the Gulf of Mexico, among the most civilised of the American nations settled on its shores, deserves notice in connection with the discovery of the same marine products among relics pertaining to Indian tribes upwards of three thousand miles distant from the native habitat of the mollusca, and separated by hundreds of miles from the nearest sea-coast. [Illustration: FIG. 49.—Tennessee Idol.]