[124] I append, however, the following passage from Mr Baring Gould, as it may be serviceable in tracing tradition, and to which I may have occasion to recur (p. 161):--"Among the American Indians an object of worship, and the centre of a cycle of legend, is Michabo, the great hare or rabbit. From the remotest wilds of the north-west to the coast of the Atlantic, from the southern boundaries of Carolina to the cheerless swamps of Hudson's Bay, the Algonquins are never tired of gathering round the winter fire, and repeating the story of Manibozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity, their various branches, the Powhatans, &c., ... and the western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this 'chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries called it, as their common ancestor (Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 162). Michabo is described as having been four-legged, monstrous, crouching on the face of the primeval waste of waters, with all his court, composed of four-footed creatures, around him. He formed the earth out of a grain of sand taken from the bottom of the ocean. It is strange that such an insignificant creature as a hare should have received this apotheosis, and it has been generally regarded as an instance of the senseless brute-worship of savages. But its prevalence leads the mythologist to suspect that some confusion of words has led to a confusion of ideas, a suspicion which becomes a certainty when the name is analysed, for it is then found to be The Great White One, or Great Light, and to be in reality the sun, a fact of which the modern Indians are utterly unaware." If Mr Baring Gould finds that the word Michabo also signifies "The Great Light," or "The Great White One," it goes far to identify the worship of the hare with the worship of the sun, more especially when it is noted (_vide_ Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," i. 103) that the hare was one of the four hieroglyphics of the year among the ancient Mexicans.[A] Animal worship seems here plainly connected with sun-worship. But above and beyond it, do we not here also get a glimpse of more celestial light? "The Great Light" is also "The Great White One." He is described as "crouching on the face of the primeval waste of waters." In these phrases we seem almost to read the text of Gen. i. 3, "And God said, Be light, and light was made;" ver. 2, "Darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the waters."