Rushing impetuously along it rises up to Heaven:
The common people complain and sigh.’”
—Vide supra, p. 396.
“The venerable Emperor exclaimed with a sigh, ‘Ho assistant
Counsellor! the islands great and small up to the mountain’s top;
The door of the birds and of beasts, all is overflowed together—
Is swamped: be it thy care to open the way, to let off the water.’”
He then says:—
“My task is completed; my sacrifice I have offered in the second month, trouble is at an end, the dark destiny is changed; the streams of the south flow down to the sea; garments are prepared; food is provided; all the nations have rest; the people enjoy themselves with gambols and dancing.”—(Compare Commemorative Festivals, infra, [p. 249]).
I should have thought that all these phrases pointed much more to a universal Deluge than to a local inundation. But Bunsen says (398)—