Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/222

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ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

that they had made men too perfect, and they breathed a cloud of mist over their vision."

When the ancestors of the Quiches migrated to America the Divinity parted the sea for their passage, as the Red Sea was parted for the Israelites.

The story of Samson is paralleled in the history of a hero named Zipanca, told of in the "Popol Vuh," who, being captured by his enemies and placed in a pit, pulled down the building in which his captors had assembled, and killed four hundred of them.

"There were giants in those days," says the Bible. A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinames.

This parallelism runs through a hundred particulars:

Both the Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east. Both called the south "the right hand of the world."

Both burnt incense toward the four corners of the earth.

Confession of sin and sacrifice of atonement were common to both peoples.

Both were punctilious about washings and ablutions.

Both believed in devils, and both were afflicted with leprosy.

Both considered women who died in childbirth as worthy of honor as soldiers who fell in battle.

Both punished adultery with stoning to death.

As David leaped and danced before the ark of the Lord, so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols.

Both had an ark, the abiding-place of an invisible god.

Both had a species of serpent-worship.

Compare our representation of the great serpent-mound in Adams County, Ohio, with the following description of a great serpent-mound in Scotland:

"Serpent-worship in the West.—Some additional light appears to have been thrown upon ancient serpent-worship in the West by the recent archæological explorations of Mr. John S. Phené, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., in Scotland. Mr. Phené has just investigated