"All over Europe-in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland--the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes, figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, have been ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood, Wallace, and St. Patrick."[1] In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify them; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jealousy,--like Othello; have committed murders,--like Macbeth; have yielded to the sway of morbid minds,--like Hamlet; have stolen, lied, and debauched,--like Falstaff;--there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, and Nancies; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every great city. There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his own imagination; but we now know that the image of the _pterodactyl_ had simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad's great bird, the _roc_, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until science revealed the bones of the _dinornis_. All the winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet. In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the [1. Bancroft, "Native Races," note, vol. iii, p. 17.] {p. 120} human mind has not greatly exaggerated them: it has never drawn a bird larger than the _dinornis_ or a beast greater than the mammoth. It is utterly impossible that the races of the whole world, of all the continents and islands, could have preserved traditions from the most remote ages, of a comet having struck the earth, of the great heat, the conflagration, the cave-life, the age of darkness, and the return of the sun, and yet these things have had no basis of fact. It was not possible for the primitive mind to have imagined these things if they had never occurred. {p. 121} CHAPTER II. DID MAN EXIST BEFORE THE DRIFT? FIRST, let us ask ourselves this question, Did man exist before the Drift? If he did, he must have survived it; and he could hardly have passed through it without some remembrance of such a terrible event surviving in the traditions of the race. If he did not exist before the Drift, of course, no myths descriptive of it could have come down to us. This preliminary question must, then, be settled by testimony. Let us call our witnesses