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euphonious "Bill Williams' Fork" rises a singular looking, low capped mountain of pleasing aspects, sunlit and bright and where it is seldom cold and stormy and there, at eventide, the blessed dead gathered under the softened rays of the setting sun. 
The Northern California Indians in the vicinity of Camp Gaston, in Trinity and of Camp Wright in Mendocino County have a tradition or myth that away back in the far off times a great fire was sent upon the earth by Wah-no-nopem, the Great Spirit, in which all but two of their ancestors perished. The earth being repeopled again and its children, with time, becoming as bad and wicked as before the waters from heaven came down upon them and but few escaped. Among the Mahhaos the great fire is unknown but they believe that there came a great flood once which drove their forefathers into the neighboring mountains and that many - nearly all, were drowned. They also associate the idea of wickedness as the cause of the disaster. 
The Coyote, which among the upper Pacific Coast Indians, plays an important part, being clothed somewhat confusedly with the mixed attributes of the Deity and devil, loses its importance among the Mahhaos and becomes what he is in reality - a despicable, sneaking thief.
Very nearly, in other respects, the same superstitions exist among them which obtain among the upper country Indians and it is somewhat singular that the writer has found with the Mahhaos, with some slight modifications, certain superstitious fables which he came across in the "Landes" of lower Brittany in France; on the banks of the Rhine, and again in the "Swartzwold" or Black Forest. 
No less singular is the fact that they have named many of the constellations after certain animals in common with the old