Mountain caves are natural temples, and as the cave, like the hollow tree, is a ready-built house for the wandering savage, so it is also marvellously adapted to his ends as a shrine. Throughout Mexico and Central America we find the caves chosen as the temples of the mightiest deities and the depositories of the holiest relics.[194] The sacredness of some spots arose from their adaptation to certain rites, religious or magical. Thus, for the haruspices to practise their specialty in divination, they must choose a spot where they could watch the flight of birds. The sacrifices to the god of heaven should be under the open sky, and the Mayas of Yucatan believed that when the sun was in the zenith and the sacred fire was kindled beneath it, the ineffable Deity descended in the form of a bright plumaged _ara_ and partook of the offering. Places of this kind were of course laid under _tabu_, and thus reserved for their sacred uses only. Sometimes they were enclosed, but often the community was sufficiently informed about them to make this unnecessary. The fame of these sacred places and the powers of the gods who dwelt within them extended widely even in very primitive conditions. This gave rise to the custom of pilgrimages, quite as familiar to the American Indians before Columbus as to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. There were famous holy places on the island of Cozumel and in Colombia and Peru, to which pious palmers wended their way over many hundred miles of weary journeying. The local divinity naturally drew his colouring and his main attributes from the spot itself, and those in turn gave a similar local physiognomy to his rites and functions. We have thus a kind of geographical character impressed on early religions, which their later developments retained long after they had been severed from their first meanings and had drifted to other climes and alien races. _6. The Lower Animals._—The primitive mind did not recognise any deep distinction between the lower animals and man. The savage knew that the beast was his superior in many points, in craft and strength, in fleetness and intuition, and he regarded it with respect. To him, the brute had a soul not inferior to his own, and a language which the wise among men might on occasion learn. The strange powers and mysterious faculties they often possess were to him inexplicable by any other doctrine than that they were divine; therefore, with wide unanimity, he placed certain species of animals nearer to God than is man himself, or even identified them with the manifestations of the Highest. None was in this respect a greater favourite than the bird. Its soaring flight, its strange or sweet notes, the marked hues of its plumage, combined to render it a fit emblem of power and beauty.