Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books of China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous to the eighth century B.C., we may yet determine as long subsequent to the fully historic periods of Egypt and Babylon.[31] Chinese authors describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot, has proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its banks had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were but the beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters, carried on further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven on the rocky face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for contemporaneous with these works, and is consequently the most ancient specimen of Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears to present an intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious fact connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through ancient copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research has failed to re-discover the original. Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America, although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with the fundamental historic element. Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica, having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river Funzha leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its waters; men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few escape by flight to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that Botchica broke asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, in order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next reassembled the dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship, and went up to heaven, after having lived 500 years in Cundinamarca. I. _Chaldean and Biblical Narratives._--Of the traditions relating to the great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans. Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time when Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into Palestine.