The existence of such rites among the rude nations of South America is most important, as showing what effects may be produced by local catastrophes, recurring at distant intervals of time, on the minds of a barbarous and uncultivated race. I shall point out in the sequel how the tradition of a deluge among the Araucanian Indians may be explained, by reference to great earthquake-waves which have repeatedly rolled over part of Chili since the first recorded flood of 1590. (See chap. 29, Book II.) The legend also of the ancient Peruvians of an inundation many years before the reign of the Incas, in which only six persons were saved on a float, relates to a region which has more than once been overwhelmed by inroads of the ocean since the days of Pizarro. (Chap. 29, Book II.) I might refer the reader to my account of the submergence of a wide area in Cutch so lately as the year 1819, when a single tower only of the fort of Sindree appeared above the waste of waters (see Chap. 28, Book II.), if it were necessary, to prove how easily the catastrophes of modern times might give rise to traditionary narratives, among a rude people, of floods of boundless extent. Nations without written records, and who are indebted for all their knowledge of past events exclusively to oral tradition, are in the habit of confounding in one legend a series of incidents which have happened at various epochs; nor must we forget that the superstitions of a savage tribe are transmitted through all the progressive stages of society, till they exert a powerful influence on the mind of the philosopher. He may find, in the monuments of former changes on the earth's surface, an apparent confirmation of tenets handed down through successive generations, from the rude hunter, whose terrified imagination drew a false picture of those awful visitations of floods and earthquakes, whereby the whole earth as known to him was simultaneously devastated.