Now there were growing things in the depths, like grasses and crawling
vines. So now the Beloved Twain breathed on the stems of these grasses
(growing tall, as grass is wont to do toward the light, under the
opening they had cleft and whereby they had descended), causing them
to increase vastly and rapidly by grasping and walking round and round
them, twisting them upward until lo! they reach forth even into the
light. And where successively they grasped the stems ridges were formed
and thumb-marks whence sprang branching leaf-stems. Therewith the two
formed a great ladder whereon men and the creatures might ascend to
the second cave-floor, and thus not be violently ejected in after-time
by the throes of the Earth-mother, and thereby be made demoniac and
deformed.
Up this ladder, into the second cave-world, men and the beings crowded,
following closely the Two Little but Mighty Ones. Yet many fell back
and, lost in the darkness, peopled the under-world, whence they were
delivered in after-time amid terrible earth shakings, becoming the
monsters and fearfully strange beings of olden time. Lo! in this
second womb it was dark as is the night of a stormy season, but
larger of space and higher than had been the first, because it was
nearer the navel of the Earth-mother, hence named K’ólin tehuli (the
Umbilical-womb, or the Place of Gestation). Here again men and the
beings increased and the clamor of their complainings grew loud and
beseeching. Again the Two, augmenting the growth of the great ladder,
guided them upward, this time not all at once, but in successive
bands to become in time the fathers of the six kinds of men (the
yellow, the tawny gray, the red, the white, the mingled, and the black
races), and with them the gods and creatures of them all. Yet this
time also, as before, multitudes were lost or left behind. The third
great cave-world, whereunto men and the creatures had now ascended,
being larger than the second and higher, was lighter, like a valley in
starlight, and named Áwisho tehuli--the Vaginal-womb, or the Place of
Sex-generation or Gestation. For here the various peoples and beings
began to multiply apart in kind one from another; and as the nations
and tribes of men and the creatures thus waxed numerous as before,
here, too, it became overfilled. As before, generations of nations now
were led out successively (yet many lost, also as hitherto) into the
next and last world-cave, Tépahaian tehuli, the Ultimate-uncoverable,
or the Womb of Parturition.
Here it was light like the dawning, and men began to perceive and to
learn variously according to their natures, wherefore the Twain taught
them to seek first of all our Sun-father, who would, they said, reveal
to them wisdom and knowledge of the ways of life--wherein also they
were instructing them as we do little children. Yet like the other
cave-worlds, this too became, after long time, filled with progeny;
and finally, at periods, the Two led forth the nations of men and the
kinds of being, into this great upper world, which is called Ték’ohaian
úlahnane, or the World of Disseminated Light and Knowledge or Seeing.