Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/879

Rh carried down by circulating water. In the western part of the area solution has carved out caves and underground channels, leaving in many places natural bridges of gypsum. The rock is snowy white. Many of the plaster mills use earthy gypsum deposits, which are common, furnishing what is called "gypsum dirt." This is directly calcined, with small labor and expense. These beds, which lie in low, swampy ground, were probably formed by deposits from springs, aided by wash from the hillsides, and are recent. The rock gypsums were deposited in arms of the sea. Eleven mills are engaged in the manufacture of plaster.

Mythological Correspondences.—An attempt has been made by Dr. E. B. Tylor to use correspondence in culture as a means of tracing lines of connection and intercourse between ancient and modern peoples. Good evidence of this class is furnished by mythical beliefs notwithstanding their lack of objective value. The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance the judgment of the dead, first appearing in Egypt, is traced thence in a series of variants from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which separates the good passing over from the wicked who fall into the abyss, of the ancient Persian religion, reaches likewise to the extremities of Asia and Europe. Historical ties are practically constituted by these mythical beliefs, which connect the great religions of the world and serve as lines along which their interdependence can be followed. Similar evidences exist of Asiatic influences under which the pre-Columbian civilization of America took shape. In the religion of old Mexico four great scenes in the journey of the soul in the land of the dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers, and are depicted in the Aztec Vatican Codex. They are the crossing of the river, the fearful passage of the soul between two mountains that clash together, the soul's climbing up the mountain set with sharp obsidian knives, and the dangers of the wind carrying such knives in its blast. These pictures correspond with scenes from Buddhist hells or purgatories as depicted on the Japanese temple scrolls. So close and complete analogies of Buddhist ideas in Mexico constitute a correspondence that precludes any explanation except direct transmission from one religion to another. All these and other analogies support the view that the natives of America reached their level of civilization.

A Versatile Man.—A remarkably versatile man, nearly equally eminent as a diplomatist, naturalist, and ethnologist, was Brian Houghton Hodgson, a British officer in the India service, who died in 1894, ninety-four years old. An attack of fever while he was studying at Calcutta sent him to the hill country of Kumaon, where as assessor of the little farms he had to traverse precipitous mountain paths, crossing dangerous rivers with the help of men swimming on gourds or by bridges which were only ladders suspended from cables, became friends with the people, and imbibed a taste for natural history. Next, as assistant in Nepaul, he began the collections of manuscripts, texts, and religious tracts with which he endowed the libraries of Europe and Asia, hunting them up in the archives of Buddhist monasteries and buying them from traffickers and monks. The Buddhist collections of seven of the most famous Orientalist libraries began with these gifts, and Eugène Burnouf, who was indebted to one of these collections for the materials of his great work on the History of Buddhism,