_Noah_, then, and _Kaiomurs_[295] were one and the same person, the reformer of the human species, and the first monarch of the Pish-de-danaan dynasty. _Yavana_ was another name appropriated to him, and equivalent with _Noah_, excepting only that the former is literal, and the latter figurative. An advantage, however, arises from this difference, for when we know that _Yavana_ means the _yoni_, and _Noah_ a _boat_, and that both were equally characteristic of the same individual character, we conclude that the latter denomination was but the symbol of the former--that, in fact, it was the _lunar boat_,[296] or the _crescent_, the _concha Veneris_, and the type of _comfort_[297] that was veiled under the mystery of this ambiguous device. [Illustration] This fact once explained, you have the immediate solution of those “semicircular implements” so universal throughout this island, and which Ledwich acknowledges “have created more trouble to the antiquarians to determine their use, than all the other antiquities put together.” These are all made of the finest gold, and, as emblems of the _yoni_, which was the Raman _palladium_, used to have been worn as _breast_-plates by the priests and sovereigns. They would sometimes, also, exhibit them as ornaments to the _head_-dress: and when so designed the two terminating angles used to have been furnished with circular cups, whereby they would better adhere to the part: of such, likewise, we have the following specimen.[298] [Illustration] _Yun_ is the usual mode of pronouncing _Yavana_; and as the veneration of posterity for the virtues of this legislator, at a moment when vice had threatened a general decay,[299] led them to consider him a god, he hence obtained the prefix of _Deo_ or _Deu_, which along with that of _Cali_, whose champion he showed himself, make up the romantic, emblematic and nominal representation of _Deucaliyun_.[300] “Safe o’er the main of life the _vessel_ rides, When _passion_ furls her sails, and _reason_ guides; Whilst she who has that surest rudder lost, Midst rocks and quicksands by the waves is tost; No certain road she keeps, nor port can find, Toss’d up and down by every wanton wind.”[301] The struggles for ascendency between contending parties are not the growth of a day; still less are they unstained by the effusion of blood. _Deluge_ was no very extravagant hyperbole to apply to such a carnage; for independently of our knowing that _every_ visitation, whether by _fire_, _water_, or _sword_, was so denominated by the Easterns, we have the Scriptures themselves illustrating this use of the term in applying it to the description at a far later period of an equally severe and no less distressing catastrophe.