"_The old men_, however, either more lenient than Zeus, or lacking his thunder, contented themselves with forcing the offender back by puffing the smoke of their pipes into his face." Here we have the event, which properly should have preceded the cave-story, brought in subsequent to it. The sun nearly burns up the earth, and the earth is saved amid the smoke of incense from the pipes of the old men--the gods. And we are told that the increasing size of the earth has four times rendered it necessary that the sun should be put farther back from the earth. The clearer the atmosphere, the farther away the sun has appeared. "At night, also, the other dumb man issues from this cave, bearing the moon under his arm, and lighting up such part of the world as he can. Next, the old men set to work to make the heavens, intending to _broider in the stars in beautiful patterns of bears, birds, and such things_." That is to say, a civilized race 'began to divide up the heavens into constellations, to which they gave the names of the Great and Little Bear, the Wolf, the Serpent, the Dragon, the Eagle, the Swan, the Crane, the Peacock, the Toucan, the Crow, etc.; some of which names they retain among ourselves to this day. "But, just as they had made a beginning, a prairie-wolf rushed in, and, crying out, 'Why all this trouble and embroidery?' scattered the pile of stars over all the floor of heaven, just as they still lie." This iconoclastic and unæsthetical prairie-wolf represents a barbarian's incapacity to see in the arrangement {p. 200} of the stars any such constellations, or, in fact, anything but an unmeaning jumble of cinders. And then we learn how the tribes of men separated: "The old men" (the civilized race, the gods) "prepared two earthen _tinages_, or water-jars, and having decorated one with bright colors, filled it with trifles; while the other was left plain on the outside, but filled within with flocks and herds and riches of all kinds. These jars being covered, and presented to the Navajos and Pueblos, the former chose the gaudy but paltry jar; while the Pueblos received the plain and rich vessel--each nation showing, in its choice, traits which characterize it to this day." In the legends of the Lenni-Lenape,--the Delaware Indians,--mankind was once buried in the earth with a wolf; and they owed their release to the wolf, who scratched away the soil and dug out a means of escape for the men and for himself. The Root-Diggers of California were released in the same way by a coyote."[1] "The Tonkaways, a wild people of Texas, still celebrate this early entombment of the race in a most curious fashion. They have a grand annual dance. One of them, naked as he was born, is _buried in the earth_; the others, clothed in wolf-skins, walk over him, snuff around him, howl in lupine style, and finally dig _him up with their nails_."[2] Compare this American custom with the religious ceremony of an ancient Italian tribe: