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Stories of a Great Flood in the Indian Archipelago

From Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law

The Battas or Bataks of Sumatra say that in the beginning of time the earth rested on the head, or rather on the three horns, of Naga Padoha, a monster who is described as a serpent with the horns of a cow, but who appears to have been also provided with hands and feet. When Naga Padoha grew weary of supporting the earth on his horns, he shook his head, and the earth sank into the water.

Thereupon the high god Batara Guru set about recovering it from the watery abyss. For that purpose he sent down his daughter Puti-orla-bulan; indeed she requested to be despatched on this beneficent mission. So down she came, riding on a white owl and accompanied by a dog. But she found all the nether world so covered with water that there was no ground for the soles of her feet to rest upon. In this emergency her divine father Batara Guru came to the rescue of his child, and let Mount Bakarra fall from heaven to be an abode for her. It may be seen in the land of the Battas to this day, and from it gradually sprang all the rest of the habitable earth. Batara Guru's daughter had afterwards three sons and three daughters, from whom the whole of mankind are descended, but who the father of them all may have been is not revealed by the legend. The restored earth was again supported on the horns of Naga Padoha ; and from that time forward there has been a constant struggle between him and Batara Guru, the monster always trying to rid himself of his burden, and the deity always endeavouring to prevent him from so doing.

Hence come the frequent earthquakes, which shake the world in general and the island of Sumatra in particular. At last, when the monster proved obstreperous, Batara Guru sent his son Layang-layang mandi (which means the diving swallow) to tie Naga Padoha's hands and feet. But even when he was thus fettered, the monster continued to shake his head, so that earthquakes have not ceased to happen. And he will go on shaking himself till he snaps his fetters. Then the earth will again sink into the sea, and the sun will approach to within an ell of this our world. The men of that time will, according to their merit, either be transported to heaven or cast into the flaming cauldron in which Batara Guru torments the wicked until they have expiated their sins. At the destruction of the world, the fire of the cauldron will join with the fire of the sun to consume the material universe.

A less grandiose version of the Batta belief, which in the preceding form unites the reminiscence of a universal flood with the prophecy of a future destruction of the earth by water and fire, is recorded by a modern traveller, who visited the Battas in their mountain home. According to him, the people say that, when the earth grew old and dirty, the Creator, whom they call Debata, sent a great flood to destroy every living thing. The last human pair had taken refuge on the top of the highest mountain, and the waters of the deluge had already reached to their knees, when the Lord of All repented of his resolution to make an end of mankind. So he took a clod of earth, kneaded it into shape, tied it to a thread, and laid it on the rising flood, and the last pair stepped on it and were saved. As the descendants of the couple multiplied, the clod increased in size till it became the earth which we all inhabit at this day.

The natives of Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, say that in days of old there was a strife between the mountains of their country as to which of them was the highest. The strife vexed their great ancestor Balugu Luomewona, and in his vexation he went to the window and said, "Ye mountains, I will cover you all!" So he took a golden comb and threw it into the sea, and it became a huge crab, which stopped up the sluices whereby the waters of the sea usually run away. The consequences of the stoppage were disastrous. The ocean rose higher and higher till only the tops of two or three mountains in Nias still stood above the heaving billows. All the people who with their cattle had escaped to these mountains were saved, and all the rest were drowned. That is how the great ancestor of the islanders settled the strife between the mountains ; and the strife is proverbial among his descendants to the present day.

The natives of Engano, another island to the west of Sumatra, have also their story of a great flood. Once on a time, they say, the tide rose so high that it overflowed the island and every living being was drowned, except one woman. She owed her preservation to the fortunate circumstance that, as she drifted along on the tide, her hair caught in a thorny tree, to which she was thus enabled to cling. When the flood sank, she came down from the tree, and saw with sorrow that she was left all alone in the world. Beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, she wandered inland in the search for food, but finding nothing to eat, she returned disconsolately to the beach, where she hoped to catch a fish. A fish, indeed, she saw ; but when she tried to catch it, the creature glided into one of the corpses that were floating on the water or weltering on the shore. Not to be balked, the woman picked up a stone and struck the corpse a smart blow therewith. But the fish leaped from its hiding-place and made off in the direction of the interior. The woman followed, but hardly had she taken a few steps when, to her great surprise, she met a living man. When she asked him what he did there, seeing that she herself was the sole survivor of the flood, he answered that somebody had knocked on his dead body, and that in consequence he had returned to life. The woman now related to him her experiences, and together they resolved to try whether they could not restore all the other dead to life in like manner by knocking on their corpses with stones. No sooner said than done.

The drowned men and women revived under the knocks, and thus was the island repeopled after the great flood.

The Ibans or Sea Dyaks of Sarawak, in Borneo, are fond of telling a story which relates how the present race of men survived a great deluge, and how their ancestress discovered the art of making fire. The story runs thus. Once upon a time some Dyak women went to gather young bamboo shoots for food. Having got them, they walked through the jungle till they came to what they took to be a great fallen tree. So they sat down on it and began to pare the bamboo shoots, when to their astonishment the trunk of the tree exuded drops of blood at every cut of their knives. Just then up came some men, who saw at once that what the women were sitting on was not a tree but a gigantic boa-constrictor in a state of torpor. They soon killed the serpent, cut it up, and carried the flesh home to eat. While they were busy frying the pieces, strange noises were heard to issue from the frying-pan, and a torrential rain began to fall and never ceased falling till all the hills, except the highest, were submerged and the world was drowned, all because these wicked men had killed and fried the serpent.

Men and animals all perished in the flood, except one woman, a dog, a rat, and a few small creatures, who fled to the top of a very high mountain. There, seeking shelter from the pouring rain, the woman noticed that the dog had found a warm place under a creeper; for the creeper was swaying to and fro in the wind and was warmed by rubbing against the trunk of the tree She took the hint, and rubbing the creeper hard against a piece of wood she produced fire for the first time. That is how the art of making fire by means of the fire-drill was discovered after the great flood Having no husband the woman took the fire-drill for her mate, and by its help she gave birth to a son called Simpang-impang, who, as his name implies, was but half a man, since he had only one arm, one leg, one eye, one ear, one cheek, half a body, and half a nose. These natural defects gave great offence to his playmates the animals, and at last he was able to supply them by striking a bargain with the Spirit of the Wind, who had carried off some rice which Simpang-impang had spread out to dry. At first, when Simpang-impang demanded compensation for this injury, the Spirit of the Wind flatly refused to pay him a farthing ; but being vanquished in a series of contests with Simpang-impang, he finally consented, instead of paying him in gongs or other valuables, of which indeed he had none, to make a whole man of him by supplying him with the missing parts and members Simpang-impang gladly accepted the proposal, and that is why mankind have been provided with the usual number of arms and legs ever since.

Another Dyak version of the story relates how, when the flood began, a certain man called Trow made a boat out of a large wooden mortar, which had hitherto served for pounding rice. In this vessel he embarked with his wife, a dog, a pig, a fowl, a cat, and other live creatures, and so launched out on the deep. The crazy ship outrode the storm, and when the flood had subsided, Trow and his wife and the animals disembarked. How to repeople the earth after the destruction of nearly the entire human race was now the problem which confronted Trow ; and in order to grapple with it he had recourse to polygamy, fashioning for himself new wives out of a stone, a log, and anything else that came to hand. So he soon had a large and flourishing family, who learned to till the ground and became the ancestors of various Dyak tribes The Ot-Danoms, a tribe of Dutch Borneo in the valley of the Barito, tell of a great deluge which drowned many people. Only one mountain peak rose above the water, and the few people who were able to escape to it in boats dwelt on it for three months, till the flood subsided and the dry land appeared once more.

The Bare'e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes also tell of a flood which once covered the highest mountains, all but the summit of Mount Wawo Pebato, and in proof of their story they point to the sea-shells which are to be found on the tops of hills two thousand feet and more above the level of the sea. Nobody escaped the flood except a pregnant woman and a pregnant mouse, who saved themselves in a pig's trough and floated about, paddling with a pot-ladle instead of an oar, till the waters sank down and the earth again became habitable. Just then the woman, looking about for rice to sow, spied a sheaf of rice hanging from an uprooted tree, which drifted ashore on the spot where she was standing. With the help of the mouse, who climbed up the tree and brought down the sheaf, she was able to plant rice again.

But before she fetched down the sheaf, the mouse stipulated that as a recompense for her services mice should thenceforth have the right to eat up part of the harvest. That is why the mice come every year to fetch the reward of their help from the fields of ripe rice ; only they may not strip the fields too bare. As for the woman, she in due time gave birth to a son, whom she took, for want of another, to be her husband. By him she had a son and daughter, who became the ancestors of the present race of mankind. In Minahassa, a district of northern Celebes, there is a mountain called Lankooe, and the natives say that on the top of that mountain the dove which Noah sent out of the ark plucked the olive-branch which she brought back to the patriarch The story is clearly due to Mohammedan or Christian influence. In a long Malay poem, taken down in the island of Sunda, we read how Noah and his family were saved in the ark from the great flood, which lasted forty days, and during the prevalence of which all mountains were submerged except Goonoong Padang and Goonoong Galoonggoong.

The Alfoors of Ceram, a large island between Celebes and New Guinea, relate that after a great flood, which overwhelmed the whole world, the mountain Noesakoe appeared above the sinking tide, its sides clothed with great trees, of which the leaves were shaped like the female organs of generation. Only three persons survived on the top of the mountain, but the sea-eagle brought them tidings that other mountain peaks had emerged from the waters. So the three persons went thither, and by means of the remarkable leaves of the trees they repeopled the world. The inhabitants of Rotti, a small island to the south-west of Timor, say that in former times the sea flooded the earth, so that all men and animals were drowned and all plants and herbs beaten down to the earth. Not a spot of dry ground was left. Even the high mountains were submerged, only the peak of Laki-mola, in Bilba, still rose solitary over the waves. On that mountain a man and his wife and children had taken refuge. After some months the tide still came creeping up and up the mountain, and the man and his family were in great fear, for they thought it would soon reach them.

So they prayed the sea to return to his old bed The sea answered "I will do so, if you give me an animal whose hairs I cannot count." The man thereupon heaved first a pig, then a goat, then a dog, and then a hen into the flood, but all in vain ; the sea could number the hairs of every one of them, and it still came on. At last he threw in a cat: this was too much for the sea, it could not do the sum, and sank abashed accordingly. After that the osprey appeared and sprinkled some dry earth on the waters, and the man and his wife and children descended the mountain to seek a new home. Thereupon the Lord commanded the osprey to bring all kinds of seed to the man, such as maize, millet, rice, beans, pumpkins, and sesame, in order that he might sow them and live with his family on the produce That is the reason why in Rotti, at the end of harvest, people set up a sheaf of rice on the open place of the village as an offering to Mount Lakimola Everybody cooks rice, and brings it with betel-nuts, coco-nuts, tobacco, bananas, and breadfruit as an oblation to the mountain ; they feast and dance all kinds of dances to testify their gratitude, and beg him to grant a good harvest next year also, so that the people may have plenty to eat.

The Nages, in the centre of the East Indian island of Flores, say that Dooy, the forefather of their tribe, was saved in a ship from the great flood. His grave is under a stone platform, which occupies the centre of the public square at Boa Wai, the tribal capital. The harvest festival, which is attended not only by the villagers but also by people from far and near, takes place round this grave of their great ancestor. The people dance round the grave, and sacrifices of buffaloes are offered. The spirits of all dead members of the tribe, wherever they may be, whether in the air, or in the mountains, or in the caves and dens of the earth, are invited to attend the festival and are believed to be invisibly present at it. On this occasion the civil chief of the tribe is gorgeously arrayed in golden jewellery, and on his head he wears the golden model of a ship with seven masts in memory of the escape of their great ancestor from the flood.

Stories of a great flood are told also by some of the wild tribes of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands. One such tale is said to be current among the Atás of the Davao District, who are supposed to be descendants of an invading people that intermarried with the Negritoes and other aboriginal tribes. Their legend of the deluge runs thus. The greatest of all the spirits is Manama, who made the first men from blades of grass, weaving them together until they assumed the human form. In this manner he created eight persons, male and female, who later became the ancestors of the Atás and all the neighbouring tribes. Long afterwards the water covered the whole earth, and all the Atás were drowned except two men and a woman. The waters carried them far away, and they would have perished if a great eagle had not come to their aid. The bird offered to carry them on its back to their homes. One of the men refused, but the other man and the woman accepted the offer and returned to Mapula Another version of the story is told by the Mandayas, another wild tribe of the same district, who inhabit a rugged, densely wooded region, where the mountains descend almost to the water's edge, forming high sheer cliffs at their base. They say that many generations ago a great flood happened, which drowned all the inhabitants of the world except one pregnant woman.

She prayed that her child might be a boy. Her prayer was answered, and she gave birth to a boy whose name was Uacatan. When he grew up, he took his mother to wife, and from their union all the Mandayas are descended.

Further, stories of a great flood are current among the wild tribes which occupy the central mountains and eastern coasts of Formosa ; and as these tribes apparently belong by race and language to the Malayan family, their traditions of a deluge may appropriately find a place here, though the large island which is their home lies off the coast of China. The stories have been recorded by a Japanese gentleman, Mr. Shinji Ishii, who resided for some years in Formosa for the sake of studying the natives. He has very kindly placed his unpublished manuscripts at my disposal for the purposes of this work.

One of the tribes which inhabit the eastern coast of Formosa are the Ami. They are supposed to have been the last to arrive in this part of the island. Unlike the rest of the aborigines, they trace the descent of blood and property through their mothers instead of through their fathers, and they have a peculiar system of age-grades, that is, they classify all members of the tribe in a series of ranks according to their respective ages Among these people Mr. Ishii discovered the story of a great flood in several different versions. One of them, recorded at the village of Kibi, runs as follows :—

In ancient times there existed the god Kakumodan Sappatorroku and the goddess Budaihabu. They descended to a place called Taurayan, together with two children, the boy Sura and the girl Nakao. At the same time they brought with them a pig and a chicken, which they reared. But one day it happened that two other gods, named Kabitt and Aka, were hunting near by, and seeing the pig and the chicken they coveted them. So they went up to the house and asked Kakumodan to give them the creatures, but having nothing to offer in exchange they met with a flat refusal. That angered them, and to avenge the affront they plotted to kill Kakumodan. To assist them in carrying out this nefarious design they called in a loud voice on the four sea-gods, Mahahan, Mariyaru, Marimokoshi, and Kosomatora, who readily consented to bear a hand. "In five days from now," they said, "when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain, where there are stars."

So on the fifth day, without waiting for the sound, Kabitt and Aka fled to the mountain where there were stars. When they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher, till soon Kakumodan's house was flooded. But Kakumodan and his wife escaped from the swelling tide, for they climbed up a ladder to the sky. Yet so urgent was the danger and so great their haste, that they had no time to rescue their two children. Accordingly, when they had reached their place of safety up aloft, they remembered their offspring, and feeling great anxiety on their account they called them in a loud voice, but no voice answered. However, the two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned. For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of the house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain. The brother and sister now found themselves alone in the world ; and though they feared to offend the ancestral gods by contracting an incestuous marriage, they nevertheless became man and wife, and their union was blest with five children, three boys and two girls, whose names are recorded. Yet the pair sought to mitigate or avert the divine wrath by so regulating their conjugal intercourse that they came into contact with each other as little as possible ; and for that purpose they interposed a mat between them in the marriage bed. The first gram of millet was produced from the wife's ear during her first pregnancy, and in due time husband and wife learned the proper ritual to be observed in the cultivation of that cereal.

At the village of Baran a somewhat different version of the story was recorded by Mr. Ishii. According to this latter version the great flood was due not to a rising of the sea, but to an earthquake, followed by the bursting forth of hot subterranean waters. They say that at that time the moun-tains crumbled down, the earth gaped, and from the fissure a hot spring gushed forth, which flooded the whole face of the earth. Many people were drowned ; indeed few living things survived the ravages of the inundation. However, two sisters and a brother escaped in a wooden mortar, which floated with them southward along the coast to a place called Rarauran. There they landed and climbed to the top of Mount Kaburugan to survey the country round about. Then they separated, the sisters going to the south and the brother to the west, to search for a good land ; but finding none they returned once more to Rarauran. Again they ascended the mountain, and the brother and his younger sister reached the summit, but the elder sister was so tired that she remained behind half-way up. When her brother and her younger sister searched for her, they found to their sorrow that she was turned into a stone.

After that they desired to return to their native land, from which they had drifted in the wooden mortar. But when they came to examine the mortar, they found it so rotten and leaky that they dared not venture to put to sea in it again. So they wandered away on foot. One day the forlorn wanderers were alarmed by the sight of smoke rising at a distance. Expecting nothing less than a second eruption and a second flood, they hurried away, the brother taking his sister by the hand to hasten her steps. But she was so weary with wandering that she could not go a step farther and fell to the ground. So there they were forced to stay for many days. Meantime the symptoms which had alarmed them had ceased to threaten, and they resolved to settle on the spot.

But they were now all alone in the land, and they reflected with apprehension on the misery of the childless old age which seemed in store for them. In this dilemma, as there was nobody else for them to marry, they thought they had better marry each other. Yet they felt a natural delicacy at doing so, and in their perplexity they resolved to submit their scruples to the judgment of the sun. So next morning, when the sun was rising out of the sea, the brother inquired of it in a loud voice whether he might marry his sister. The sun answered, apparently without hesitation, that he might. The brother was very glad to hear it, and married his sister accordingly. A few months afterwards the wife conceived, and, with her husband's help, gathered china-grass, spun it into yarn, and wove the yarn into clothes for the expected baby. But when her time came, to the bitter disappointment of both parents, she was delivered of two abortions that were neither girl nor boy. In their vexation they tore up the baby-linen and threw it, with the abortions, into the river. One of the abortions swam straight down the river, and the other swam across the river ; the one became the ancestor of fish, and the other the ancestor of crabs. Next morning the brother inquired of the moon why fish and crabs should thus be born from human parents. The moon made answer, "You two are brother and sister, and marriage between you is strictly prohibited. As neither of you can find another spouse, you must place a mat between you in the marriage bed." The advice was accepted, and soon afterwards the wife gave birth to a stone. They were again painfully surprised, and said, "The moon is mocking us. Who ever heard of a woman giving birth to a stone?" In their impatience they were about to heave the stone into the river, when the moon appeared and checked them, saying, "Although it is a stone, you must take great care of it." They obeyed the injunction and kept the stone very carefully.

Afterwards they descended the mountain and settled in a rich fat land called Arapanai. In time the husband died, and the wife was left with no other companion than the white stone to which she had given birth. But the moon, pitying her loneliness and grief, informed the woman that soon she would have a companion. And sure enough, only five days later, the stone swelled up, and four children came forth from it, some of them wearing shoes and others barefooted. Those that wore shoes were probably the ancestors of the Chinese.

A third version of the Ami story was recorded by Mr. Ishii at the village of Pokpok. Like the preceding versions, it relates how a brother and sister escaped in a wooden mortar from a destructive deluge, in which almost all living beings perished ; how they landed on a high mountain, married, begat offspring, and founded the village of Pokpok in a hollow of the hills, where they thought they would be secure against another deluge.
The Tsuwo, a tribe of head-hunters in the mountainous interior of Formosa, have also a story of a great flood, which they told to Mr. Ishii at the village of Paichana. When their ancestors were living dispersed in all directions, there occurred a mighty inundation whereby plain and mountains alike were covered with water.

Then all the people fled and took refuge on the top of Mount Niitaka-yama, and there they stayed until the flood subsided, and the hills and valleys emerged once more from the watery waste. After that the survivors descended in groups from the mountains and took their several ways over the land as chance or inclination prompted them. They say that it was while they dwelt on the top of the mountain, during the great flood, that they first conceived the idea of hunting for human heads. At first they resorted to it simply as a pastime, cutting off the head of a bad boy and hoisting it on the point of a bamboo, to the great amusement of the bystanders. But afterwards, when they had descended from the mountain and settled in separate villages, the young men of each village took arms and went out to decapitate their neighbours in grim earnest. That, they say, was the origin of the practice of head-hunting.

The Tsuwo of the same village also tell how they obtained fire during the great flood. For in their hurried retreat to the mountain they had no time to take fire with them, and for a while they were hard put to it by the cold. Just then some one spied a sparkle like the twinkling of a star on the top of a neighbouring mountain. So the people said, "Who will go thither and bring fire for us?" Then a goat came forward and said, "I will go and bring back the fire." So saying, the noble animal plunged into the swelling flood and swam straight for the mountain, guided by the starlike twinkling of the fire on its top. The people awaited its return in great anxiety. After a while it reappeared from out the darkness, swimming with a burning cord attached to its horns. Nearer and nearer it drew to the shore, but at the same time lower and lower burned the fire on the cord. Would the goat reach the bank before the flame had burned itself out ? The excitement among the people was intense, but none dared to dive into the angry surges and swim to the rescue of the animal. Tired with its long and strenuous exertions, the goat swam more and more feebly, till at last it drooped its head, the water closed over it, and the fire was out. After that the people despatched a taoron (?) on the same errand, and it succeeded in bringing the fire safe to land. So pleased were the people at its success, that they all gathered round the animal and patted it.

That is why the creature has such a shiny skin and so tiny a body to this day.

Further, the Tsuwo of the same village relate how the great flood was drained by the disinterested exertions of a wild pig, and how the natural features of the country were artificially moulded when all the water had run away. They say that they tried various plans for draining the water, but all in vain, until a large wild pig came forward and said, "I will go into the water, and by breaking a bank in a lower reach of the river, I may cause the flood to abate. In case I should be drowned in the river I would beg you, of your kindness, to care for my orphan children, and to give them potatoes every day. If you consent to this proposal, I am willing to risk my life in your service." The people gladly closed with this generous offer; the pig plunged into the water, and swimming with the current, disappeared in the distance. The efforts of the animal were crowned with success, for very soon afterwards the water of the flood suddenly sank, and the crests of the mountains began to appear above it. Rejoiced at their escape, the people resolved to make a river with the help of the animals, apparently for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of the great flood.

As they descended from Mount Niitaka-yama, where they had taken refuge, a great snake offered to act as their guide, and by gliding straight down the slope he hollowed out a bed for the stream. Next thousands of little birds, at the word of command, came each with a pebble in its beak, and by depositing the pebbles in the channel of the river they paved it, as we see it to this day. But the banks of the river had still to be formed, and for this purpose the services of the animals were enlisted. By treading with their feet and working with a will all together, they soon fashioned the river banks and valleys. The only bird that did not help in this great work was the eagle; instead of swooping down he flew high in air, and as a punishment he has never since been allowed to drink of the river water, but is obliged to slake his thirst at the puddles in the hollow trunks of trees. In this way the valleys and rivers were fashioned, but there was as yet no plain. Then the goddess Hipararasa came from the south and made a plain by crushing the mountains. She began in the south and worked up along the western part, levelling the mountains as she went. But when she came to the central range she was confronted by an angry bear, which said, "We are fond of the mountains. If you make them into a plain, we shall lose our dwelling-places." With that he bit and wounded the child of the goddess. Surprised by this attack, the goddess desisted from her work of destruction in order to tend her wounded child. Meantime the earth hardened, so that not even the power of God could level the mountains. That is why the central range still stands in Formosa.

The Bunun, another tribe in the interior of Formosa, whose territory borders on that of the Tsuwo to the east, tell stories of a great flood in which a gigantic snake and crab figure prominently. They say that once upon a time, in the land where their ancestors lived there fell a heavy rain for many days, and to make matters worse a huge snake lay across the river, blocking up the current, so that the whole land was flooded. The people escaped to the top of the highest mountain, but such was the strength of the rising tide that they trembled at the sight of it. Just then a crab appeared opportunely and cut the body of the snake clean through with its nippers. So the flood soon subsided ; but many people were drowned and few survived. In another version of the Bunun story the cause of the flood is related somewhat differently. A gigantic crab tried to devour a big snake, clutching it fast in its nippers. But the snake contrived to shake off its assailant and escape to the sea. At once a great flood occurred ; the waves washed the mountains, and the whole world was covered with water.

The ancestors of the Bunun took refuge on Mount Usabeya (Niitaka-yama) and Mount Shinkan, where they made shift to live by hunting, till the water subsided and they returned to their former abode. There they found that their fields and gardens had been washed away ; but fortunately a stalk of millet had been preserved, the seeds' were planted, and on the produce the people subsisted. They say that many mountains and valleys were formed by the great flood, for before that time the land had been quite flat.

The primitive inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, have a legend of a great flood, which may be related here, though their islands do not strictly belong to the Indian Archipelago. They say that some time after they had been created, men grew disobedient and regardless of the commands which the Creator had given them at their creation. So in anger he sent a great flood which covered the whole land, except perhaps Saddle Peak where the Creator himself resided. All living creatures, both men and animals, perished in the waters, all save two men and two women, who, having the good luck to be in a canoe at the time when the catastrophe occurred, contrived to escape with their lives. When at last the waters sank, the little company landed, but they found themselves in a sad plight, for all other living creatures were drowned. However, the Creator, whose name was Puluga, kindly helped them by creating animals and birds afresh for their use. But the difficulty remained of lighting a fire, for the flood had extinguished the flames on every hearth, and all things were of course very damp.

Hereupon the ghost of one of their friends, who had been drowned in the deluge, opportunely came to the rescue. Seeing their distress he flew in the form of a kingfisher to the sky, where he found the Creator seated beside his fire. The bird made a dab at a burning brand, intending to carry it off in his beak to his fireless friends on earth, but in his haste or agitation he dropped it on the august person of the Creator himself, who, incensed at the indignity and smarting with pain, hurled the blazing brand at the bird. It missed the mark and whizzing Past him dropped plump from the sky at the very spot where the four people were seated moaning and shivering. That is how mankind recovered the use of fire after the great flood. When they had warmed themselves and had leisure to reflect on what had happened, the four survivors began to murmur at the Creator for his destruction of all the rest of mankind ; and their passion getting the better of them they even plotted to murder him. From this impious attempt they were, however, dissuaded by the Creator himself, who told them, in very plain language, that they had better not try, for he was as hard as wood, their arrows could make no impression on him, and if they dared so much as to lay a finger on him, he would have the blood of every mother's son and daughter of them This dreadful threat had its effect: they submitted to their fate, and the mollified Creator condescended to explain to them, in milder terms, that men had brought the great flood on themselves by wilful disobedience to his commands, and that any repetition of the offence in future would be visited by him with condign punishment That was the last time that the Creator ever appeared to men and conversed with them face to face ; since then the Andaman Islanders have never seen him, but to this day they continue to do his will with fear and trembling.

Stories of a Great Flood in Australia

The Kurnai, an aboriginal Australian tribe of Gippsland, in Victoria, say that a long time ago there was a very great flood ; all the country was under water, and all the black people were drowned except a man and two or three women, who took refuge in a mud island near Port Albert. The water was all round them Just then the pelican, or Bunjil Borun, as the Kurnai call the bird, came sailing by in his canoe, and seeing the distress of the poor people he went to help them One of the women was so beautiful that he fell in love with her When she would have stepped into the canoe, he said, "Not now, next time"; so that after he had ferried all the rest, one by one, across to the mainland, she was left to the last. Afraid of being alone with the ferryman, she did not wait his return on his last trip, but swam ashore and escaped. However, before quitting the island, she dressed up a log in her opossum rug and laid it beside the fire, so that it looked just like herself.When the pelican arrived to ferry her over, he called, "Come on, now." The log made no reply, so the pelican flew into a passion, and rushing up to what he took to be the woman, he lunged out with his foot at her and gave the log a tremendous kick.

Naturally he only hurt his own foot, and what with the pain and the chagrin at the trick that had been played him, he was very angry indeed and began to paint himself white in order that he might fight the husband of the impudent hussy who had so deceived him. He was still engaged in these warlike preparations, and had only painted white one half of his black body, when another pelican came up, and not knowing what to make of such a strange creature, half white and half black, he pecked at him with his beak and killed him. That is why pelicans are now black and white ; before the flood they were black all over

According to the aborigines about Lake Tyers, in Victoria, the way in which the great flood came about was this. Once upon a time all the water in the world was swallowed by a huge frog, and nobody else could get a drop to drink. It was most inconvenient, especially for the fish, who flapped about and gasped on the dry land. So the animals laid their heads together and came to the conclusion that the only way of making the frog disgorge the waters was to tickle his fancy so that he should laugh. Accordingly they gathered before him and cut capers and played pranks that would have caused any ordinary person to die of laughing. But the frog did not even smile. He sat there in gloomy silence, with his great goggle eyes and his swollen cheeks, as grave as a judge. As a last resort the eel stood up on its tail and wriggled and danced about, twisting itself into the most ridiculous contortions. This was more than even the frog could bear. His features relaxed, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks and the water poured out of his mouth. However, the animals had now got more than they had bargained for, since the waters disgorged by the frog swelled into a great flood in which many people perished. Indeed the whole of mankind would have been drowned, if the pelican had not gone about in a canoe picking up the survivors and so saving their lives.

Another legend of a deluge current among the aborigines of Victoria relates how, many long ages ago, the Creator Bundjel was very angry with black people because they did evil. So he caused the ocean to swell by the same process by which Strepsiades in Aristophanes supposed that Zeus made rain to fall from the clouds; and in the rising flood all black people were drowned, except those whom Bundjel loved and catching up from the water fixed as stars in the sky. Nevertheless one man and one woman escaped the deluge by climbing a high tree on a mountain ; so they lived and became the ancestors of the present human race. The Narrinyeri of South Australia say that once on a time a man's two wives ran away from him He pursued them to Encounter Bay, and there seeing them at a distance he cried out in anger, "Let the waters arise and drown them." On that a terrible flood swept over the hills and overtaking the fugitives overwhelmed them, so that they died. To such a height did the waters rise that a certain man named Nepelle, who lived at Rauwoke, was obliged to drag his canoe to the top of the hill which is now called Point Macleay. The dense part of the Milky Way is said to be his canoe floating in the sky.

The natives about Mount Elliot, on the coast of Queensland, say that in the time of their forefathers there happened a great flood, which drowned most of them ; only a few were saved who contrived to escape to the top of a very high mountain, called Bibbiringda, which rises inland from the northern bay of Cape Cleveland.

Stories of a Great Flood in New Guinea and Melanesia

In the Kabadi district of British New Guinea the natives have a tradition that once on a time a certain man Lohero and his younger brother were angry with the people about them, and they put a human bone into a small stream. Soon the great waters came forth, forming a sea, flooding all the low land, and driving the people back to the mountains, till step by step they had to escape to the tops of the highest peaks.

There they lived till the sea receded, when some of them descended to the lowlands, while others remained on the ridges and there built houses and formed plantations The Valmans of Berlin Harbour, on the northern coast of New Guinea, tell how one day the wife of a very good man saw a great fish swimming to the bank. She called to her husband, but at first he could not see the fish. So his wife laughed at him and hid him behind a banana-tree, that he might peep at it through the leaves. When he did catch sight of it at last, he was horribly afraid, and sending for his family, a son and two daughters, he forbade them to catch and eat the fish. But the other people took bow and arrow and a cord, and they caught the fish and drew it to land. Though the good man warned them not to eat of the fish, they did it notwithstanding. When the good man saw that, he hastily drove a pair of animals of every sort up into the trees, and then he and his family climbed up into a coco-nut tree. Hardly had the wicked men consumed the fish than water burst from the ground with such violence that nobody had time to save himself. Men and animals were all drowned. When the water had mounted to the top of the highest tree, it sank as rapidly as it had risen. Then the good man came down from the tree with his family and laid out new plantations.

The natives of the Mamberano River, in Dutch New Guinea, are reported to tell a story of a great flood, caused by the rising of the river, which overwhelmed Mount Vanessa, and from which only one man and his wife escaped, together with a pig, a cassowary, a kangaroo, and a pigeon. The man and his wife became the ancestors of the present race of men ; the beasts and birds became the ancestors of the existing species. The bones of the drowned animals still lie on Mount Vanessa.

On the subject of deluge legends in New Guinea the following remarks of a judicious and well-informed writer deserve to be borne in mind. "New Guinea," he says, "is the classic land of earthquakes, and ten years never pass without the occurrence somewhere of a tremendous convulsion, such as the sinking of whole districts or the inroad of destructive flood-waves. Thus, for example, the sea is said to have formerly reached to the top of Saddle Mountain. Stories of a flood are therefore common in New Guinea, and have originated in the country itself under the impression of these natural phenomena. Now the Papuan hears the Biblical story of the flood, in which his fancy is particularly taken by the many great animals, of each of which a pair was saved. The terrestrial animals of his own country are hardly worth the saving, and the birds can escape from the flood without the help of man. But since in the Biblical flood large animals were saved, of which pictures are shown to the native, animals which afford much better eating than wretched rats and mice, the black man modifies his own flood legends accordingly.

It cannot surprise us, therefore, that legends with a Biblical colouring already existed in New Guinea when the first mission settled there in 886; for the neighbourhood of the Malay Archipelago, where missionaries had been much longer resident, facilitated the importation of the stories. Besides, a mission had been established in the island of Rook as early as about the middle of the nineteenth century ; and Rook has been in constant communication with the mainland of New Guinea by means of the neighbouring Siassi Islands. The Bismarck Archipelago also, where missionaries have long been at work, deserves to be considered with reference to the importation of Biblical stories into Northern New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) ; for a perpetual intercourse of ideas is kept up between the two countries by the seafaring Siassi and Tami."

The Fijians have a tradition of a great deluge, which they call Walavu-levu : some say that the flood was partial, others that it was universal. The way in which the catastrophe came about was this. The great god Ndengei had a monstrous bird called Turukawa, which used to wake him punctually by its cooing every morning. One day his two grandsons, whether by accident or design, shot the bird dead with their bows and arrows, and buried the carcase in order to conceal the crime. So the deity overslept himself, and being much annoyed at the disappearance of his favourite fowl, he sent out his messenger Uto to look for it everywhere. The search proved fruitless. The messenger reported that not a trace of the bird was to be found. But a second search was more successful, and laid the guilt of the murder at the door of the god's grandsons. To escape the rage of their incensed grandfather the young scapegraces fled to the mountains and there took refuge with a tribe of carpenters, who willingly undertook to build a stockade strong enough to keep Ndengei and all his catchpolls at bay. They were as good as their word, and for three months the god and his minions besieged the fortress in vain. At last, in despair of capturing the stockade by the regular operations of war, the baffled deity disbanded his army and meditated a surer revenge.

At his command the dark clouds gathered and burst, pouring torrents of rain on the doomed earth. Towns, hills, and mountains were submerged one after the other ; yet for long the rebels, secure in the height of their town, looked down with unconcern on the rising tide of waters. At last when the surges lapped their wooden walls and even washed through their fortress, they called for help to a god, who, according to one account, instructed them to form a float out of the fruit of the shaddock; accord-ing to others, he sent two canoes for their use, or taught them how to build a canoe for themselves and thus ensure their own safety. It was Rokoro, the god of carpenters, who with his foreman Rokola came to their rescue. The pair sailed about in two large double canoes, picking up the drowning people and keeping them on board till the flood subsided. Others, however, will have it that the survivors saved themselves in large bowls, in which they floated about. Whatever the minor variations may be in the Fijian legend, all agree that even the highest places were covered by the deluge, and that the remnant of the human race was saved in some kind of vessel, which was at last left high and dry by the receding tide on the island of Mbengha.

The number of persons who thus survived the flood was eight. Two tribes were completely destroyed by the waters ; one of them consisted entirely of women, the members of the other had tails like those of dogs. Because the survivors of the flood landed on their island, the natives of Mbengha claimed to rank highest of all the Fijians, and their chiefs always acted a conspicuous part in Fijian history : they styled themselves "Subject to heaven alone" (Ngali-duva-ki-langi). It is said that formerly the Fijians always kept great canoes ready for use against another flood, and that the custom was only discontinued in modern times.

The Melanesians of the New Hebrides say that their great legendary hero Qat disappeared from the world in a deluge. They show the very place from which he sailed away on his last voyage. It is a broad lake in the centre of the island of Gaua. In the days of Qat the ground now occupied by the lake was a spacious plain clothed with forest. Qat felled one of the tallest trees in the wood and proceeded to build himself a canoe out of the fallen trunk. While he was at work on it, his brothers would come and jeer at him, as he sat or stood there sweating away at his unfinished canoe in the shadow of the dense tropical forest. "How will you ever get that huge canoe through the thick woods to the sea?" they asked him mockingly. "Wait and see," was all he deigned to answer.

When the canoe was finished, he gathered into it his wife and his brothers and all the living creatures of the island, down to the smallest ants, and shut himself and them into the vessel, which he provided with a covering. Then came a deluge of rain ; the great hollow of the island was filled with water, which burst through the circle of the hills at the spot where the great waterfall of Gaua still descends seaward, with a thunderous roar, in a veil of spray. There the canoe swept on the rushing water through the barrier of the hills, and driving away out to sea was lost to view. The natives say that the hero Qat took away the best of everything with him when he thus vanished from sight, and still they look forward to his joyful return. When Bishop Patteson and his companions first landed on Mota, the happy natives took him for the long-lost Qat and his brethren. And some years afterwards, when a small trading vessel was one day seen standing in for the island of Gaua and making apparently for the channel down which the water of the great cascade flows to mingle with the sea, the old people on the island cried out joyfully that Qat was come again, and that his canoe knew her own way home. But alas! the ship was cast away on the reef, and Qat has not yet come home