Fictions yet truths; for
caverns and hollow trees were in fact the houses and temples of our
first parents, and from them they went forth to conquer and adorn the
world; and from the inorganic constituents of the soil acted on by
Light, touched by Divine Force, vivified by the Spirit, did in reality
the first of men proceed.
This cavern, which thus dimly lingered in the memories of nations,
occasionally expanded to a nether world, imagined to underlie this of
ours, and still inhabited by beings of our kind, who have never been
lucky enough to discover its exit. The Mandans and Minnetarees on the
Missouri River supposed this exit was near a certain hill in their
territory, and as it had been, as it were, the womb of the earth, the
same power was attributed to it that in ancient times endowed certain
shrines with such charms; and thither the barren wives of their nation
made frequent pilgrimages when they would become mothers.[229-1] The
Mandans added the somewhat puerile fable that the means of ascent had
been a grapevine, by which many ascended and descended, until one day an
immoderately fat old lady, anxious to get a look at the upper earth,
broke it with her weight, and prevented any further communication.
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