A North American tribe, a branch of the Tinneh of British America, have a legend that "the earth existed first in a chaotic state, with only one human inhabitant, a woman, _who dwelt in a cave_ and lived on berries." She met one day a mysterious animal, like a dog, who transformed himself into a handsome young man, and they became the parents of a giant race."[2] There seems to be an allusion to the cave-life in Ovid, where, detailing the events that followed soon after the creation, he says: "Then for the first time did the parched air _glow with sultry heat_, and the _ice_, bound up by the winds, was pendent. Then for the first time did men enter houses; those houses were _caverns_, and thick shrubs, and twigs fastened together with bark."[3] But it is in the legends of the Navajo Indians of North America that we find the most complete account of the cave-life. It is as follows: "The Navajos, living north of the Pueblos, say that at one time all the nations, Navajos, Pueblos, Coyoteros, and white people, lived together tinder ground, in the heart of a mountain, near the river San Juan. _Their food was meat, which they had in abundance, for all kinds of game were closed up with them in their cave;_ but their light was dim, and only endured for a few hours each day. There were, happily, two dumb men among the Navajos, flute-players, [1. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 239. 2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 105. 3. "The Metamorphoses," Fable IV.] {p. 197} who enlivened the darkness with music. One of these, striking by chance on the roof of the limbo with his flute, brought out a hollow sound, upon which the elders of the tribe determined to bore in the direction whence the sound came. The flute was then set up against the roof, and the Raccoon sent up the tube _to dig a way out_, but he could not. Then the Moth-worm mounted into the breach, and bored and bored till he found himself suddenly on the outside of the mountain, and _surrounded by water_." We shall see hereafter that, in the early ages, mankind, all over the world, was divided into totemic septs or families, bearing animal names. It was out of this fact that the fables of animals possessing human speech arose. When we are told that the Fox talked to the Crow or the Wolf, it simply means that a man of the Fox totem talked to a man of the Crow or Wolf totem. And, consequently, when we read, in the foregoing legend, that the Raccoon went up to dig a way out of the cave and could not, it signifies that a man of the Raccoon totem made the attempt and failed, while a man of the Moth-worm totem succeeded. We shall see hereafter that these totemic distinctions probably represented original race or ethnic differences. The Navajo legend continues: