projecting above the _débris_, running to them, as we shall see, with
outcries, and fighting over the fragments.

The references to the worship of "the morning star," which occur in
the legend, seem to relate to some great volcano in the East, which
alone gave light when all the world was lost in darkness. As Byron
says, in his great poem, "Darkness":

And they did live by watch-fires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crownèd kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were they _who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain-torch_."

In this pitiable state were once the ancestors of all mankind.

If you doubt it, reader, peruse again the foregoing legends, and then
turn to the following Central American prayer, the prayer of the
Aztecs, already referred to on page 186, _ante_, addressed to the god
Tezcatlipoca, himself represented as a flying or winged serpent,
perchance the comet:

"Is it possible that this lash and chastisement are not given for our
correction and amendment, but only for our total destruction and
overthrow; that _the sun will never more shine upon us, but that we
must remain in perpetual darkness?_ . . . It is a sore thing to tell
how we are all in