Mythical Monsters. Gould Charles

92

“The work of destruction was carried on methodically. From the Caspian Sea to the Indus, the Mongols ruined, within four years, more than four centuries of continuous labour have since restored. The most flourishing cities became a mass of ruins: Samarkand, Bokhara, Nizabour, Balkh, and Kandahar shared in the same destruction.” – Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 358.

93

“An army of 700,000 Mongols met half the number of Mahommedans.” —Ibid. p. 357.

94

Those interested in the subject may read with great advantage the section on dynamical geology in Dana’s valuable manual. He points out the large amount of wear accomplished by wind carrying sand in arid regions, by seeds falling in some crevice, and bursting rocks open through the action of the roots developed from their sprouting, to say nothing of the more ordinarily recognized destructive agencies of frost and rain, carbonic acid resulting from vegetable decomposition, &c.

95

Darwin, in Vegetable Mould and Earth-worms, has shown that earthworms play a considerable part in burying old buildings, even to a depth of several feet.

96

Rev. T. K. Cheyne, Article “Deluge,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 1877. François Lenormant, “The Deluge, its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879.

97

Bunsen estimates that 20,000 years were requisite for the formation of the Chinese language. This, however, is not conceded by other philologists.

98

Rawlinson quotes the African type on the Egyptian sculptures as being identical with that of the negro of the present day.

99

“While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogenic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaeton; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several local catastrophes resembling it.” – Lenormant, Contemporary Review, November 1879.

100

François Lenormant, “The Deluge; its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 465.

101

Here several verses are wanting.

102

“The water of the twilight at break of day,” one of the personifications of rain.

103

The god of thunder.

104

The god of war and death.

105

The Chaldæo-Assyrian Hercules.

106

The superior heaven of the fixed stars.

107

Vases of the measure called in Hebrew Seäh. This relates to a detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.

108

These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.

109

The god of epidemics.