The adoration of streams, springs, and lakes, or rather of the spirits
their rulers, prevailed everywhere; sometimes avowedly because they
provided food, as was the case with the Moxos, who called themselves
children of the lake or river on which their village was, and were
afraid to migrate lest their parent should be vexed;[124-1] sometimes
because they were the means of irrigation, as in Peru, or on more
general mythical grounds. A grove by a fountain is in all nature worship
the ready-made shrine of the sylphs who live in its limpid waves and
chatter mysteriously in its shallows. On such a spot in our Gulf States
one rarely fails to find the sacrificial mound of the ancient
inhabitants, and on such the natives of Central America were wont to
erect their altars (Ximenes). Lakes are the natural centres of
civilization. Like the lacustrine villages which the Swiss erected in
ante-historic times, like ancient Venice, the city of Mexico was first
built on piles in a lake, and for the same reason--protection from
attack.
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