Note 23 — Chapter IV · Elements.

The supreme god of the Quichuas (American), Viracocha (‘sea foam’), rises out of Lake Titicaca, and journeys with lightnings for all opposers, to disappear in the Western Ocean. The Quichua is mentally brother of the Arab camel-driver. ‘The sea,’ it is said in the ‘Arabian Nights,’—‘the sea became troubled before them, and there arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the meadow,’ and ‘behold it was a Jinn23 of gigantic stature.’ The Jinn is sometimes helpful as it is formidable; it repays the fisherman who unseals it from the casket fished up from the sea, as fruitfulness comes out of the cloud no larger than a man’s hand evoked by Elijah. The perilous Jinn described in the above extract is the waterspout. Waterspouts are attributed in China to the battles of dragons in the air, and the same country recognises a demon of high tides. The newest goddess in China is a canonised protectress against the shipwrecking storm-demons of the coast, an exaltation recently proclaimed by the Government of the empire in obedience, as the edict stated, to the belief prevailing among sailors. In this the Chinese are a long way behind the mariners and fishermen of the French coast, who have for centuries, by a pious philology, connected ‘Maria’ with ‘La Marée’ and ‘La Mer;’ and whenever they have been saved from storms, bring their votive offerings to sea-side shrines of the Star of the Sea.