56. The clouds were roaring aloud with deep and appalling thunder, and the billows were flashing like frightful lightnings in the air; elephants, horses, and ferocious lions were wandering in the atmosphere, and forests as large as the earth, were floating in the sky. 57. The dark blue waves of over-flowing waters, pushed with such violent force against one another; as if the god of destruction was propelling them one after another to the act, of utter annihilation (or as the powers of destruction were propelling one another). 58. The waves were carrying down into the deep, the gods, men, and Nágas, together with their abodes in heaven, earth and the regions below. 59. The irresistible flood having flooded over all sides, of earth, heaven and the infernal region, the bodies of the gods and demigods, were all floating together like shoals of fishes; and their heavenly cars and vehicles were swimming over on the surface of the waters, as in the field of battle. 60. The body of dark blue waters, resembled the azure form of Krishna; and their foaming froths, likened the milk white calves about him. (The text is utterly meaningless). 61. The waves pushed one another, with the _burber_ sound for drowning every thing; and the females both of the gods and giants were heard to wail aloud with cries of _hola_ and howling. (Hola is the exclamation of wailing, corresponding with _waílá_ in Persian). 62. The loud cries raised by all, at the falling down of their houses, were resounded by the waters on all sides; and the clouds roving over the rolling waves, appeared as the covers of fallen and floating domes. 63. Ah it was piteous to behold, how the whirling waters of whirlpools, hurled down even the gods into the deep; and how Indra, Yama, and Kubera, breathed out their last breaths in the form of flying and flimsy clouds. 64. There the learned and saintly persons, were carried away with the ignorant, in the shape of dead bodies and devoid of their pride; and the cities of the gods Brahmá, Vishnu, and Indra, were swept away, all broken and crushed to pieces. 65. The bodies of weak women, were washed and carried over by the waves, and there was no body left to save them from the grasp of death; which devoured them altogether under his horrid jaws. 66. The floods which flowed at first with their serpentine course into the caves of mountains, overflooded them to their tops at last; and the cities of the gods, which floated at first as boats upon the waters on mountain tops, were hurled to the bottom at last. 67. The gods and giants and all other beings, together with their residences in heaven, and the continents and mountains on earth, were all submerged and shattered like lotus-beds by the waters; and the three worlds were turned to an universal ocean and all their grandeur and splendour were swallowed up by time, together with all the sovran powers of earth and heaven. CHAPTER CXXXX. WORKINGS OF IMAGINATION.