In the legend of the Indians of Lake Tahoe (see page 168, ante), we are told that the stars were melted by the great conflagration, and they rained down molten metal upon the earth.

In the Hindoo legend (see page 171, ante) of the great battle between Rama, the sun-god, and Ravana, the evil one, Rama persuaded the monkeys to help him build a bridge to the Island of Lanka, “and the stones which crop out through Southern India are said to have been dropped by the monkey builders.”

In the legend of the Tupi Indians (see page 175, ante), we are told that God “swept about the fire in such way that in some places he raised mountains and in others dug valleys.”

In the Bible we have distinct references to the fall of matter from heaven.  In Deuteronomy (chap. xxviii), among the consequences which are to follow disobedience of God’s will, we have the following: 

“22.  The Lord shall smite thee . . . with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

“23.  And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

“24. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust:  from. heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. . . .

“29.  And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness.”

And even that marvelous event, so much mocked at by modern thought, the standing-still of the sun, at the

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command of Joshua, may be, after all, a reminiscence of the catastrophe of the Drift.  In the American legends, we read that the sun stood still, and Ovid tells us that “a day was lost.”  Who shall say what circumstances accompanied an event great enough to crack the globe itself into immense fissures?  It is, at least, a curious fact that in Joshua (chap. x) the standing-still of the sun was accompanied by a fall of stones from heaven by which multitudes were slain.

Here is the record

“11.  And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died:  there were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.”

“13.  And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.  Is not this written in the book of Jasher?  So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

“14.  And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man:  for the Lord fought for Israel.”

The “book of Jasher” was, we are told, a very ancient work, long since lost.  Is it not possible that a great, dim memory of a terrible event was applied by tradition to the mighty captain of the Jews, just as the doings of Zeus have been attributed, in the folk-lore of Europe, to Charlemagne and Barbarossa?