The body of Ravana is _consumed by fire_. Sita, the furrowed earth, goes through _the ordeal of fire_, and comes out of it purified and redeemed from all taint of the monster Ravana; and Rama, the sun, and Sita, the earth, are separated _for fourteen years_; Sita _is hid in the dark jungle_, and then they are married again, and live happily together ever after. Here we have the battle in the air between the sun and the demon: the earth is taken possession of by the demon; the demon is finally consumed by fire, and perishes; the earth goes through an ordeal of fire, a conflagration; and for fourteen years the earth and sun do not see each other; the earth is hid in a dark jungle; but {p. 173} eventually the sun returns, and the loving couple are again married, and live happily for ever after. The Phoibos Apollo of the Greek legends was, Byron tells us-- The lord of the unerring bow, The god of life and poetry and light, The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight. The shaft had just been shot, the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might, And majesty flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the deity." This fight, so magnificently described, was the sun-god's battle with Python, the destroyer, the serpent, the dragon, the Comet. What was Python doing? He was "stealing the springs and fountains." That is to say, the great heat was drying up the water-courses of the earth. "The arrow bright with an immortal's vengeance," was the shaft with which Apollo broke the fiend to pieces and tumbled him down to the earth, and saved the springs and the clouds and the perishing ocean. When we turn to America, the legends tell us of the same great battle between good and evil, between light and darkness. Manibozho, or the Great Hare Nana, is, in the Algonquin legends, the White One, the light, the sun. "His foe was the glittering prince of serpents"-the Comet.[1] Among the Iroquois, according to the Jesuit missionary, Father Brebeuf, who resided among the Hurons in 1626, there was a legend of two brothers, Ioskeba and Tawiscara, which mean, in the Oneida dialect, the _White One_, the light, the sun, and the _Dark One_, the night. [1. Brinton's "Myths," p. 182.] {p. 174} They were twins, born of a virgin mother, who died in giving them life. Their grandmother was the moon (the _water_ deity), called _At-aeusic_, a word which signifies "she bathes herself," derived from the word for _water_.