"This name denoted the custom which the Athenians had on the day of this feast of carrying water in ewers and vases with great ceremony; in memory of the Deluge, they proceeded each year to pour this water into an opening or gulf, which was found near the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and on this occasion they recalled the sad memory of their ancestors having been submerged. This ceremony is simple and very suitable to its subject; it was well calculated to perpetuate the memory of the catastrophe caused by the waters of the Deluge. Superstition added some other customs.... They threw into the same gulf cakes of corn and honey; it was an offering to appease the infernal deities.... The Greeks placed it in the rank of their unlucky days (also 'un jour triste et lugubre'); and thus they remarked that Sylla had taken their city of Athens the very day that they had made this commemoration of the Deluge. Superstition observes everything, not to correct itself, but to confirm itself more and more in its errors. It was, according to the fable, by the opening of this gulf that the waters which had covered Attica had disappeared; it was also said that Deucalion had raised near to this place an altar which he had dedicated to Jove the Preserver. 'Tradition also attributed to Deucalion the temple of Jupiter Olympus,' in which these mournful ceremonies were performed. 'This temple was celebrated and respected by the pagan nations as far as we can trace history back.' It was reconstructed on a scale of magnificence by Pisistratus; every town and prince in Greece contributed to its adornment; it was completed by the Emperor Adrian in 126 of our era. The antiquity of this monument, the respect which all nations have shown it, and the character of the traditions which they have of its origin, ought to establish for the festival of the Hydrophoria a great antiquity. The feasts, in general, are more ancient than the temples."--_Boulanger_, i. 38-40. [203] Compare Bryant. I will now ask the reader, if he has not read (and seen the illustrations in) Mr Catlin's "O-kee-pa,"[204] to compare the following extract with the preceding:--