The tradition which connects the creation with "the rocky caverns of the mountains" is more recondite--may it possibly be a recollection of the commencement of civil life after the Deluge, when Noah led them, according to tradition, from the mountains to the plains? M. L'Abbé Gainet says (i. 176)--"The Lord repeated four times the promise that He would not send another deluge.... The children of Noah were long scared by the recollection of the dreadful calamity.... It is probable that they did not decide upon leaving the 'plateaux' of the mountains till quite late. Moreover, caverns have been found in the mountains of the Himalaya, and in many other elevated regions of Asia, which they suppose to have been formed by the first generations of man after the Deluge. The works of the learned M. de Paravey make frequent mention of them." This tradition is supported by the lines of Virgil referring to Saturn (_vide infra_, p. 210). "Is genus indocile, ac dispersum _montibus altis_ Composuit; legesque dedit."--_Æn._ viii. 315. I give these suggestions for what they may be worth.[115] Truly, where some see nothing but harmony, others see nothing but diversity. Only to put it to a fair test, I should like to see Mr Catlin or some one else group these various traditions round any one tradition which they believe to be at variance with the revelation of Genesis, and which, at the same time, they happen to consider to be the true one. It must be conceded that in one way the facts accord with Mr Catlin's theory--contradicted, however, by other evidence (_infra_, ch. xi.)--that the Indians were created on the American continent. But upon any theory that they were not created at all, but existed always in pantheistic transformation, or had progressed from the monkey, or had been developed in evolution from some protoplasm, is not the tradition incongruous and inexplicable? [115] It occurs to me as possible that these various traditions may have had their foundation in the recollection of hardship, at some early period of their subsequent migration, which were transferred back and connected with their tradition of the altered state of things after the Deluge, arising out of the substitution of animal for vegetable food--of which the notion that man once lived on acorns may have been only an extreme form of expression. The following tradition of Saturn (_vide infra_, Saturn, p. 210), seems to tend in this direction: "Diodorus Siculus gives the same history of Saturn as is by Plutarch above given of Janus--[Greek: ex agriou diaitês eis êmeron Bion metarêsa anthrôpous].--Diodorus, 1. 5, p. 334. He brought mankind from their foul and savage way of _feeding_ to a more mild and rational _diet_."--Bryant, ii. 261.