In the narrative of the succeeding work of creation, says M. de Bourbourg, there is always a double sense. Creation and life are civilization; the silence and calm of Nature before the existence of animated beings are the calm and tranquillity of Ocean, over which a sail is flying towards an unknown shore; and the first aspect of the shores of America, with its mighty mountains and great rivers, is confounded with the first appearance of the earth from the chaos of waters.
"This is the first word," says the Quiche text. "There were neither men, nor animals, nor birds, nor fishes, nor wood, nor stones, nor valleys, nor herbs, nor forests. There was only the heaven. The image of the earth did not yet show itself. There was only the sea, on all sides surrounded by the heaven ... Nothing had motion, and not the least sigh agitated the air ... In the midst of this calm and this tranquillity, was only the Father and the Maker, in the obscurity of the night; there were only the Fathers and Generators on the whitening water, and they were clad in azure raiment... And it is on account of them that heaven exists, and exists equally the Heart of Heaven, which is the name of God."--Vol. I. p. 51. [B]
[Footnote B: Compare the Hindoo conception, translated from one of the old Vedic legends, in Bunsen's _Philosophy of History_:--
"Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above. What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed? Was it the waters' fathomless abyss? There was not death,--yet was there nought immortal. There was no confine betwixt day and night. The only One breathed breathless by itself;-- Other than it there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound,--an ocean without light. The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat."]
The legend then pictures a council between these "Fathers" and the Supreme Creator; after which, the word is spoken, and the earth bursts forth from the darkness, with its great mountains and forests and animals and birds, as they might to a voyager approaching the shore. An episode occurs, describing a deluge, but still bearing in it the traces of the double tradition,--the one referring to some primeval catastrophe, and the other to a local inundation, which had perhaps surprised the first legislators in the midst of their efforts. The Mexican tradition (Codex Chimalpopoca) shows more distinctly the united action of the Mediator (Quetzalcohuatl) and the Deity:--"From ashes had God created man and animated him, and they say it is Quetzalcohuatl who hath perfected him who had been made, and hath _breathed into him, on the seventh day, the breath of life_."