Its interpretation is, that the virgin is the Dawn, who brings forth the Day, which assures safety and knowledge, and the Night, which departs with her. The Day leaves us, and in its personified form returns no more, though ever expected. That such were the original form and significance of the myth, we have the testimony of Bishop Ettwein,[224] himself a Delaware scholar, and who drew his information from the natives as well as the missionaries. He tells us that their legend ran, that in the beginning the first woman fell from heaven and bore twins; that it was toward the east that they directed their children to turn their faces when they prayed to the spirits; and that their old men had said that it was an ancient belief that from that quarter some one would come to them to benefit them. Therefore, said they, when our ancestors saw the first white men, they looked upon them as divine, and adored them. The Dutch travelers, Jasper Donkers and Peter Sluyter, relate a part of this myth as they heard it from New Jersey Indians in 1679. These informed them that all things came from a tortoise. It had brought forth the world, and from the middle of its back had sprung up a tree, upon whose branches men had grown. This tortoise "had a power and a nature to produce all things, such as earth, trees and the like." But it was not the _primum mobile_, not the ultimate energy of the universe. "The first and great beginning of all things was _Kickeron_ or _Kickerom_, who is the original of all, who has not only once produced or made all things, but produces every day." The tortoise brought forth what this primal divinity "wished through it to produce."[225] This is a very interesting statement. It reveals a depth of thought on the part of the native philosophers for which we were scarcely prepared. The worthy Dutch travelers do not pretend to explain the myth. But its sense can be clearly interpreted. The turtle or tortoise is everywhere in Algonkin pictography the symbol of the earth.[226] From the earth, from the soil, all organic life, the whole realm of animate existence--ever sharply defined in Algonkin grammar and thought from inanimate existence--proceeds, directly as vegetable life, or indirectly as animal life. The earth is the All-Mother, ever-producing, inexhaustible. As for _Kikeron_, the eternally active, hidden spirit of the universe, I have but to refer the reader to the list of ideas associated around this root _kik_, which I have given on a previous page (p. 102) to reveal the significance of this word. We may, with equal correctness, translate it Life, Light, Action or Energy. It is the abstract conception back of all these. The distinction was the same as that established by the scholastic philosophers between the _mundus_ and the _anima mundi_; between the _essentia_ and the _existentia;_ between _natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_. But who expected to find it among the Lenape?