The coyote, the bear, the sun, and all the animals are endowed with speech and great cunning, the coyote especially so among some of the Western tribes, and are conceived as possessing human attributes, like the “Brer Rabbit” and other animals whose prowess is related by Uncle Remus. But the Eskimo, according to A. L. Kroeber, have comparatively few animal stories. Examples of these animal stories may be found in the reports of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology and other publications. Lack of space prevents me from introducing any here. The slightest misunderstood noise is sufficient to rouse the Amerind imagination, of which I had an illustration in Arizona. I arrived at an out-of-the-way mine one night with two Amerind guides. It was winter and a stone cabin was placed at my disposal, to which I sent the natives while my white companions and I visited the men in charge. The natives presently came in, saying there was something wrong at the cabin, and they would not stay in it or even near it. When we investigated we discovered that the whole trouble arose from the ticking of a small clock, which we forthwith stopped; but nevertheless they would not remain there alone. Flood stories are numerous with all tribes, and whether they arose in local inundations or in some vast and general flood cannot now be determined. If in the latter, it would be melting ice of the glacial period. A fabulous being in Eskimo mythology is Kalopaling, who lives in the sea. His body is like that of a human being and he wears clothing made out of eider ducks’ skins. His jacket has an enormous hood, into which he thrusts any boatman that may be drowned. He cannot speak, but merely cry, “Be! be! be! be!” An Eskimo flood tale relates how the ocean long ago rose till it covered the whole land, even to the tops of the mountains, till the ice drifted over them. When the flood subsided the ice stranded and has ever since formed a cap on their summits. The keepers of the mythological tales were the shamans, and they are the real powers, generally, in a tribe. Had Cortes understood this point he would have seized, not the war-chief, Montezuma, but one of the shamans, who would have been more valuable as a hostage. Many of the shamans are believed to be able to pass through fire unharmed, and to handle it with impunity; to be able to change themselves into coyotes, etc., and then return to their normal shape, all at their own pleasure.