"Half a moon had not elapsed, however, before the earth was again troubled, this time with strong convulsions and thunderings, upon which the masters took refuge in their great tower, closing the people out. The poor slaves fled to the Humboldt River, and, getting into canoes, paddled for life _from the awful sight behind them_; for the land was tossing like a troubled sea, and casting up fire, smoke, and ashes. _The flames went up to the very heavens, and melted many stars_, SO THAT THEY RAINED DOWN IN MOLTEN METAL UPON THE EARTH, forming the ore" [gold?] "that white men seek. The Sierra was mounded up from the bosom of the earth; while the place where the great fort stood sank, leaving only the dome on the top exposed above the waters of Lake Tahoe. The inmates of the temple-tower clung to this dome to save themselves from drowning; but the Great Spirit walked upon the waters in his wrath, and took the oppressors one by one, _like pebbles_, and threw them far into the recesses of a great cavern on the east side of the lake, called to this day the Spirit Lodge, where the waters shut them in. There must they remain till the last great volcanic burning, which is to overturn the {p. 169} whole earth, is to again set them free. In the depths of cavern-prison they may still be heard, wailing and their cave, moaning, when the snows melt and the waters swell in the lake."[1] Here we have the usual mingling of fact and myth. The legend describes accurately, no doubt, the awful appearance of the tossing earth and the falling fire and _débris_; the people flying to rivers and taking shelter in the caves) and some of them closed up in the caves for ever. The legend, as is usual, accommodates itself to the geography and topography of the country in which the narrators live. In the Aztec creation-myths, as preserved by the Fray Andres de Olmos, and taken down by him from the lips of those who narrated the Aztec traditions to him, we have an account of the destruction of mankind by the sun, which reads as follows: