two trees on the sea beach, and from them created the first human pair,
man and woman. Odin gave them life and spirit, Hoener endowed them with
reason and motion, and Loder gave them the senses and physical
characteristics. The man they called Ask, and the woman Embla. Prof.
Anderson finds in the brothers the threefold Trinity of the Bible. It
is easy to fancy that there is some philological connection between the
names of the first pair in the Bible and in the Edda. Perhaps the
formation of the first pair out of trees had a deep connection with the
tree of life, Ygdrasil, which extended, according to Norse mythology
throughout the universe, furnishing bodies for mankind from its
branches. It had three great roots, one extending to the nebulous
world, and this was constantly gnawed by the serpent Nidhug. There was
nothing in the Norse mythology that taught the degradation of woman,
and the lay of Sigdrifa, in the Edda, is one of the noblest conceptions
of the character of woman in all literature.

North American Indian mythology has the human race born of the earth,
but the writer cannot learn that women held an inferior place. Among
the Quiches the mothers and fathers of old slept in the waters, covered
with green, under a limpid twilight, from which the earth and they were
called out by a mighty wind. The Algonkins believed the human family
were the children of Michabo, the spirit of the dawn, and their supreme
deity. In their language the words earth, mother and father were from
the same root. Many tribes claim descent from a raven, symbolizing the
clouds; others from a dog, which is the symbol of the water goddess.

Dr. and Madame Le Plongeon relate that in their discoveries among the
buried remains of the Mayas in Yucatan, everything marks a very high
state of civilization. In one of the exhumed temples they found
pictures on the walls, which seem to be a combination of the stories of