Let us see, now, what these flood-myths are. This I may say first, however; some of them are doubtless spurious, and few have escaped the renovating touch of the Spanish priests and chroniclers, who throughout their writings seem to think it their bounden duty to make the ideas and history of the New World correspond to those of the Old. And what the old writers have added or invented, the modern writers are, in most cases, ready and glad to accept as genuine, without doubt or question. "It is impossible," says Viscount Kingsborough, "when reading what Mexican Mythology records of the war in heaven, and of the fall of Zontemonque and the other rebellious spirits; of the creation of light by the word of Tonacatecutli, and of the division of the waters; of the sin of Yztlacoliuhqui, and his blindness and nakedness; of the temptation of Suchiquecal, and her disobedience in gathering roses from a tree, and the consequent misery and disgrace of herself and all her posterity,--not to recognise Scriptural analogies. But the Mexican tradition of the Deluge is that which bears the most unequivocal marks of having been derived from a Hebrew source."[I-25] We have seen in a preceding volume how, according to the common version of the Mexican flood-myth, Coxcox and his wife Xochiquetzal were the only human beings who escaped from the great deluge which covered the face of the earth in the Age of Water. How, when the waters went down, the ark in which they had saved themselves--the hollow trunk of a bald cypress--rested upon the Peak of Culhuacan; and how the dumb children that were born to the rescued pair were taught many languages by a dove. We have also read the reputed Tarasco legend of Tezpi, which so closely resembles the biblical legend of the deluge that it cannot be discussed as a native tradition at all, but must be regarded simply as the invention of some Spanish writer who thought it his mission to show that the Hebrew traditions were familiar to the Americans.[I-26] In Guatemala, among the Miztecs, and in Nicaragua there were also traditions of great and destructive deluges.[I-27] The Pápagos tell of a mighty flood that destroyed all life on the earth, except the hero-god Montezuma and his friend the Coyote who had foretold the deluge. Each of these made for himself an ark, and when the waters subsided and they met on the small patch of dry land that first appeared, Montezuma dispatched the Coyote four times to find out exactly how the sea lay.[I-28] Very similar is the Pima legend which relates how the prophet who would not heed the thrice repeated warnings of the Eagle was destroyed by a flood, and how Szeukha, the son of the Creator, saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or resin.[I-29] The Mattoles of California regard Taylor Peak as the point at which their forefathers took refuge from a destructive flood.[I-30] Other Californian tribes have a tradition of a deluge from which the Coyote, with his usual