What causes volcanos? The Australians account for volcanic rocks by the tradition that the sulky underground ‘ingna’ or demons made great fires and threw up red-hot stones.[462] The Kamchadals say that just as they themselves warm up their winter-houses, so the ‘kamuli’ or mountain-spirits heat up the mountains in which they dwell, and fling the brands out of the chimney.[463] The Nicaraguans offered human sacrifices to Masaya or Popogatepec (Smoking-Mountain), by throwing the bodies into the crater. It seems as though it were a controlling deity, not the mountain itself, that they worshipped; for one reads of the chiefs going to the crater, whence a hideous old naked woman came out and gave them counsel and oracle; at the edge were placed earthen vessels of food to please her, or to appease her when there was a storm or earthquake.[464] Thus animism provided a theory of volcanoes, and so it was likewise with whirlpools and rocks. In the Vei country in West Africa, there is a dangerous rock on the Mafa river, which is never passed without offering a tribute to the spirit of the flood—a leaf of tobacco, a handful of rice, or a drink of rum.[465] An early missionary account of a rock-demon worshipped by the Huron Indians will show with what absolute personality savages can conceive such a being. In the hollow of a certain sacred rock, it is related, dwells an ‘oki’ or spirit who can give success to travellers, wherefore they put tobacco into one of the cracks, and pray thus: ‘Demon who dwellest in this place, behold tobacco I present to thee; help us, keep us from shipwreck, defend us against our enemies, and vouchsafe that when we have made a good trade, we may return safe and sound to our village.’ Father Marquette relates how, travelling on a river in the then little known region of North America, he was told of a dreadful place to which the canoe was just drawing near, where dwells a demon waiting to devour such as dare to approach; this terrific manitu proved on arrival to be some high rocks in the bend of the river, against which the current runs violently.[466] Thus the missionary found in living belief among the savage Indians the very thought which had so long before passed into the classic tale of Skylla and Charybdis.