The Algonquins believed in a world, an earth, "anterior to this of ours, but one _without light or human inhabitants_. A lake burst its bounds and submerged it wholly." This reminds us of the Welsh legend, and the bursting of the lake Llion (see page 135, _ante_). The ancient world was united in believing in great cycles of time terminating in terrible catastrophes: [1. Captain Cook's "Second Voyage," vol. ii, pp. 232-235; 2. "Climate and Time," Croll, pp. 60, 61. 3. Powers's Pomo MS., Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 86.] {p. 223} Hence arose the belief in Epochs of Nature, elaborated by ancient philosophers into the Cycles of the Stoics, the great Days of Brahm, long periods of time rounding off by sweeping destructions, the Cataclysms and Ekpyrauses of the universe. Some thought in these all things perished, others that a few survived. . . . For instance, Epietetus favors the opinion that at the solstices of the great year not only all human beings, but even the gods, are annihilated; and speculates whether at such times Jove feels lonely.[1] Macrobius, so far from agreeing with him, explains the great antiquity of Egyptian civilization by the hypothesis that that country is so happily situated between the pole and the equator, as to escape both the deluge and conflagration of the great cycle."[2] In the Babylonian Genesis tablets we have the same references to the man or people who, after the great disaster, divided the heavens into constellations, and regulated, that is, discovered and revealed, their movements. In the Fifth Tablet of the Creation Legend[3] we read: "1. It was delightful all that was fixed by the great gods. 2. Stars, their appearance (in figures) of animals he arranged. 3. To fix the year through the observation of their constellations, 4. Twelve months or signs of stars in three rows he arranged, 5. From the day when the year commences unto the close. 6. He marked the positions of the wandering stars to shine in their courses, 7. That they may not do injury, and may not trouble any one." That is to say, the civilized race that followed the great cataclysm, with whom the history of the event was [1. Discourses," book iii, chapter xiii. 2. Brinton's Myths of the New World," p. 215. 3. Proctor's Pleasant Ways," p. 393.] {p. 224}