"11. And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that _the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them_ unto Azekah, and they died: there were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." "13. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down _about a whole day_. "14. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel." The "book of Jasher" was, we are told, a very ancient work, long since lost. Is it not possible that a great, dim memory of a terrible event was applied by tradition to the mighty captain of the Jews, just as the doings of Zeus have been attributed, in the folk-lore of Europe, to Charlemagne and Barbarossa? If the contact of Lexell's comet with the earth would, as shown on page 84, _ante_, have increased the length of the sidereal year three hours, what effect might not a comet, many times larger than the mass of the earth, have had upon the revolution of the earth? Were the heat, {p. 265} the conflagrations, and the tearing up of the earth's surface caused by such an arrestment or partial slowing-up of the earth's revolution on its axis? I do not propound these questions as any part of my theory, but merely as suggestions. The American and Polynesian legends represent that the catastrophe increased the length of the days. This may mean nothing, or a great deal. At least, Joshua's legend may yet take its place among the scientific possibilities. But it is in the legend of the Toltecs of Central America, as preserved in one of the sacred books of the race, the "Codex Chimalpopoca," that we find the clearest and most indisputable references to the fall of gravel (see page 166, _ante_): "'The third sun' (or era) 'is called Quia-Tonatiuh, sun of rain, because there fell a rain of fire; all which existed burned; _and there fell a rain of gravel_.' "'They also narrate that while _the sandstone which we now see scattered about_, and the tetzontli' (_amygdaloide poreuse_, basalt, trap-rocks) 'boiled with great tumult, there also arose the rocks of vermilion color.' "'Now this was in the year Ce Tecpatl, One _Flint_, it was the day _Nahui-Quiahuitl_, Fourth Rain. Now, in this day in which men were lost and destroyed _in a rain of fire_, they were transformed into goslings.'"[1] We find also many allusions in the legends to the clay. When the Navajos climbed up from their cave they found the earth covered with clay into which they sank mid-leg deep; and when the water ran off it left the whole world full of mud. In the Creek and Seminole legends the Great Spirit made the first man, in the primeval cave, "from the clay around him."