The "Popul Vuh," the national book of the Quiches, tells us of four ages of the world. The man of the first age was made of clay; he was "strengthless, inept, watery; he could not move his head, his face looked but one way; his sight was restricted, he could not look behind him," that is, he had no knowledge of the past; "he had been endowed with language, but he had no intelligence, so he was consumed in the water."[1] Then followed a higher race of men; they filled the world with their progeny; they had intelligence, but _no moral sense_"; "they forgot the Heart of Heaven." They were _destroyed by fire and pitch from heaven_, accompanied by tremendous earthquakes, from which only a few escaped. Then followed a period _when all was dark_, save the white light "of the morning-star--sole light as yet of the primeval world"--probably a volcano. "Once more are the gods in council, _in the darkness, in the night of a desolated universe_." Then the people prayed to God for light, evidently for the return of the sun: "'Hail! O Creator they cried, 'O Former! Thou that hearest and understandest us! abandon us not! forsake us not! O God, thou that art in heaven and on earth; O Heart of Heaven I O Heart of Earth! _give us descendants, and a posterity as long as the light endure_.'" . . . In other words, let not the human race cease to be. [1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 46.] {p. 217} "It was thus they spake, living tranquilly, _invoking the return of the light; waiting the rising of the sun;_ watching the star of the morning, precursor of the sun. But no sun came, and the four men and their descendants grew uneasy. 'We have no person to watch over us,' they said; 'nothing to guard our symbols!' Then they adopted gods of their own, and waited. They kindled fires, _for the climate was colder;_ then there fell _great rains and hail-storms,_ and put out their fires. Several times they made fires, and several times the rains and storms extinguished them. Many other trials also they underwent in Tulan, famines and such things, and _a general dampness and cold_--for the earth was _moist, there being yet no sun_." All this accords with what I have shown we might expect as accompanying the close of the so-called Glacial Age. Dense clouds covered the sky, shutting out the light of the sun; perpetual rains and storms fell; the world was cold and damp, muddy and miserable; the people were wanderers, despairing and hungry. They seem to have come from an eastern land. We are told: "Tulan was a much colder climate than the happy eastern land they had left." Many generations seem to have grown up and perished under the sunless skies, "waiting for the return of the light"; for the "Popul Vuh" tells us that "here also the language of all the families was confused, so that no one of the first four men could any longer understand the speech of the others."