[Illustration]
The smoke, the noise, the fire and the water having cleared away, the
Ammi were now discussing the earthquake. They had forgot their war
preparations in the presence of a greater enemy than the Lali. They had
to make peace with the World. What had happened? Will it occur again?
These were among the questions they asked.
“I do not see that we made much by coming down from the trees,” said one.
“The earth is just as unstable as the trees, and shakes as much as they.
I should have been thrown off many times had there been any place to fall
to.”
“Had we kept to the trees,” observed another, “we should have had more
experience in holding on. I got thrown down and rolled about, because I
had nothing to hold to. When the ground rocks it is more violent than a
palm or a pine.”
“It all comes,” said Gimbo, the grandfather of Sosee, “from walking
upright. If the Apes had kept on all fours, they would not have been
thrown to the ground. Nobody can stand on his hind legs alone, in such a
shaking. While the rest of you tumbled I remained on my four feet. Men
need to walk solidly, and nothing gives a firmer foundation than four
feet. No elephant is fool enough to walk on two; and men, by keeping two
of their feet in the air, are always falling. It was a great mistake to
get up from the ground. Other animals have not done it. Men were made to
go on all fours. Everything they want is on the ground, and they can see
it better when looking down than when looking up. Their eyes are thus
nearer what they are hunting, and they are not in danger of stumbling
when they are looking at their feet.”
Another thought that the horror occurred because they were too
irreligious. They had been neglecting their ceremonies, and there
was general doubt about the traditions of Shoozoo. “It is a divine
visitation,” he said, and he was in favor of sacrificing something.
Another said: “It was the voice of the great winged Alligator, with which
Shoozoo fought. Chained under the Swamp this beast shook himself, which
caused the waters to flow over these regions. The fire and smoke which he
blew from his mouth, caused all the damage. He swallowed up the sun and
stars for awhile, and the mountains which he carried off he has not yet
returned. I think we should propitiate him, or he will come again.”
[Illustration: THE FIGHT WITH THE FIRE MONSTER.]
The fire, which some had never before seen, or only vaguely observed in
the lightning or a distant volcano, proved the greatest terror of all,
as it was the greatest mystery. They saw it creeping through the grass,
destroying scattered pieces of wood, as well as flaming in various
parts of the forest. They thought it was a great serpent, and tried to
kill it by throwing clubs at it, which it in turn devoured; when they
declared that it was a monster that fed on wood, and ate whole forests.
Some thought that it was the sun that had broken loose from the sky, and
fallen in pieces to the earth; because, in addition to its light, they
felt its heat. All were inclined to worship it as a divinity, some saying
that it was Shoozoo himself.
“It is some kind of snake,” said one, “and I never yet saw a snake that I
could not strangle;” whereat he seized a burning brand, which he took to
be the body of the serpent, and tried to squeeze it to death. He dropped
it quickly, however, with a loud scream, saying that it had bit him. He
then jumped on the fire, thinking to crush the monster, when the sparks
flew up in great numbers, frightening all who were present, and igniting
the hair of the assailant, who was soon rushing about in flames.
“There is a fight between him and the monster,” said one; “let us see
which will whip.”
The man was soon burned to death and his body nearly consumed, at which
great terror seized the rest.
They called the monster the Sun-serpent, and for a long time, whenever
fire appeared, they avoided it, or prayed to it, to avert its wrath. When
it lightened they were afraid, and prayed that it would remain in the
sky, and not come to the earth. They regarded the thunder as its voice;
and when it struck a tree or destroyed a forest, they said it had come
down to take a meal. In time, as they got more familiar with it, they
took to feeding it with wood, to appease its hunger, and prevent it from
devouring them or their possessions. When it went out, they thought it
had crawled into the earth, like any other snake, and rarely was anybody
bold enough to try to dig it out, or even to approach its hole. When
they saw it flying through the air, as in lightning or a falling star,
they predicted some great calamity, and were exceptionally religious.
They pointed to the many thunder storms and to the damage done by the
lightning and rain as evidence of all this; for these disturbances were
all more frequent and violent in the Tertiary Age than at any subsequent
time, the air being never for a long time either clear or silent.
There was, in short, so much that the early race did not understand, that
they were perpetually in awe. Every convulsion of nature was a subject of
worship to them. They thought it was alive, or produced by some living
monster, and they feared its wrath and tried to appease it. Earth-quakes
soon got a name, and were placed among the divinities. Thunder,
Lightning, Rain, Hail, and subsequently Snow were canonized as heavenly
spirits. The wind was the breath of Shoozoo, or of his great Alligator.
Sunshine came to be the smile of the Great Serpent, when he was in good
humor. The air came soon to be as full of monsters as the earth, and
men’s imagination saw more than their eyes. A spirit world had dawned
upon them, and the supernatural began to rule the race. All the unknown
was fashioned into gods, and the realm of ignorance became one of terror
and devotion.
“It all comes,” persisted Gimbo, “from looking up. If people only walked
on their four feet they would not see the sky and its fires. I never see
anything that is high, and so am not made afraid. The cure for all these
evils is to return to all fours, when you won’t see anything that is so
far off that it does not concern you.”
“But you see more snakes, and are more frightened by them than we,”
retorted one.
“Snakes must be seen before you have to do with them,” replied Gimbo; “if
they see you first you don’t come off so well. By keeping my eyes on the
ground, I see them before they harm me, and soon they are out of the way,
or I am. When your first acquaintance with a snake is made by tramping
on him, there is a disagreeable surprise and a dangerous controversy.
But it is not so with the Sun-serpent or the Alligator of Shoozoo, which
you are always seeing and which never comes near; so that you are always
frightened when there is no danger.”
A long religious controversy then ensued, which turned mainly on whether
men should keep to the ways and traditions of their fathers, and walk,
like them, on all fours, or whether they should stand up and look ahead.
The latter course was thought to unsettle their faith and make them
introduce new gods, if not to abandon entirely their religion. Gimbo
thought there were swamp snakes enough to engage men’s attention,
without troubling themselves about snakes in the air. “Shoozoo’s
Alligator,” he said, “is a literal swamp reptile, and that is enough to
worship. By introducing new snakes into our theology, you will confuse
all our religion.”
Others, however, were not as conservative as Gimbo, but believed in
acknowledging snakes wherever they found them. Religion is naturally
progressive, they thought, and advancement in religion at this time was
believed to consist in adding more snakes to theology.
While, therefore, Gimbo represented the Unitarians, or Mono-snakists,
who claimed that there was only one great snake god—the Alligator of
Shoozoo—there was a polytheistic, or poly-snake, party, which insisted on
a many-snaked Pantheon, and particularly on a belief in the sun-snake and
the wood-eating snake, which were thought by many to be one and the same;
while still others thought that these, with the Alligator of Shoozoo,
formed together a trinity of snakes which were in substance all one, but
manifested themselves under the three forms of Sun-light, Wood-fire and
Alligator.