and storms fell; the world was cold and damp, muddy and miserable;
the people were wanderers, despairing and hungry. They seem to have
come from an eastern land. We are told:

"Tulan was a much colder climate than the happy eastern land they had
left."

Many generations seem to have grown up and perished under the sunless
skies, "waiting for the return of the light"; for the "Popul Vuh"
tells us that "here also the language of all the families was
confused, so that no one of the first four men could any longer
understand the speech of the others."

That is to say, separation and isolation into rude tribes had made
their tongues unintelligible to one another.

This shows that many, many years--it may be centuries--must have
elapsed before that vast volume of moisture, carried up by
evaporation, was able to fall

{p. 218}

back, in snow and rain to the land and sea, and allow the sun to
shine through "the blanket of the dark." Starvation encountered the
scattered fragments of mankind.

And in these same Quiche legends of Central America we are told:

"The persons of the godhead were enveloped in the _darkness which
enshrouded a desolated world_."[1]