"The Emperor said, 'Oh thou Governor of the four mountains of the Empire! The swelling flood is producing mischief; It spreads itself far and wide; It surrounds the hills, it overflows the dams; Rushing impetuously along it rises up to Heaven: The common people complain and sigh.'" --_Vide supra_, p. 396. "The venerable Emperor exclaimed with a sigh, 'Ho assistant Counsellor! the islands great and small up to the _mountain's top_; The door of _the birds_ and of beasts, all is overflowed together-- Is swamped: be it thy care to open the way, to let off the water.'" He then says:-- "My task is completed; my _sacrifice_ I have offered in the second month, trouble is at an end, the dark destiny is changed; the _streams_ of the south flow down to the sea; garments are prepared; food is provided; _all the nations_ have rest; the people enjoy themselves with gambols and dancing."--(Compare Commemorative Festivals, _infra_, p. 249). I should have thought that all these phrases pointed much more to a universal Deluge than to a local inundation. But Bunsen says (398)-- "The fact is fully proved both by the inscription and the work of Yu itself. The inscription was on the _top_ of the mountain, Yu-lu-fun, in the district of Shen-shu-lu. Owing to its having become illegible in early times, it was removed to _the top_ of an adjoining mountain." ... "The former _locality_ tallies exactly with the very interesting description of the empire in the time of Yu, which we find at the opening of the second book of the Shuking." And Bunsen concludes, "It may be presumed after this verification, that in future nobody will seriously doubt the strictly epic description of the Shuking in the Canon of Yu," as above. So far from being impressed by the discovery of the monument on the top of the local mountain, as evidence of the local deluge, I can see in it only a memorial of the universal Deluge localised; and I cannot help considering it in connection with the worship of the tops of mountains, of which we shall find traces elsewhere (p. 244-46). Surely Baron Bunsen proves too much, and describes to us a deluge which must have been on the scale of the universal Deluge for all countries below the level of the mountain Yu-lu-fun. But, let it be said, that this description, so accordant with the description of the flood, was merely Chinese exaggeration. I here wish to point out two curious coincidences. What if we shall find works similar of those to Yao or Yu, ascribed to the original founders in Egypt and Cashmere? As in the first instance, I shall have to quote from Baron Bunsen himself, I am surprised that the coincidence should have escaped his observation.