Note 935 — Chapter XVI · GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

More than one tale is found elsewhere, similar to this, about the defile of Tempê:—

“A tradition exists that this part of the country was once a lake, and that Solomon commanded two deeves, or genii, named Ard and Beel, to turn off the water into the Caspian, which they effected by cutting a passage through the mountains; and a city, erected in the newly-formed plain, was named after them Ard-u-beel.” (Sketches on the Shores of the Caspian, by W. R. Holmes.)

Also about the plain of Santa Fe di Bogota, in South America, that it was once under water, until Bochica cleft the mountains and opened a channel of egress (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 87-88); and about the plateau of Kashmir (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 102), drained in a like miraculous manner by the saint Kâsyapa. The manner in which conjectures, derived from local configuration or peculiarities, are often made to assume the form of traditions, is well remarked by the same illustrious traveller: “Ce qui se présente comme une tradition, n’est souvent que le reflet de l’impression que laisse l’aspect des lieux. Des bancs de coquilles à demi-fossiles, répandues dans les isthmes ou sur des plateaux, font naître même chez les hommes les moins avancés dans la culture intellectuelle, l’idée de grandes inondations, d’anciennes communications entre des bassins limitrophes. Des opinions, que l’on pourroit appeler systématiques, se trouvent dans les forêts de l’Orénoque comme dans les îles de la Mer du Sud. Dans l’une et dans l’autre de ces contrées, elles ont pris la forme des traditions.” (A. von Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 147.) Compare a similar remark in the same work and volume, p. 286-294.