Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
To appreciate Sol’s birth, his vernal coming, and the sadness of his autumnal going,
we require to try and remove ourselves back to that early condition of our race, when
clothes, and those the scantiest and most indifferent, were a luxury of the great; when the
whole mass of the people lived in what we should call mere huts of grass, clay, or stone, the
rude construction of which left the dwellers keenly alive to every wintry blast and shower.
Winter to them, indeed, was a ruthless tyrant, who lopped off from every tribe its
frail ones by thousands; nor have we yet managed to entirely avert his destructive
influences of cold and darkness. At the fatal sign of the Dragon which appears on
the October horizon, all nature collapses, and cold obtains the mastery over growth
and heat, causing the churches to say their Paternosters; and when in November
Sagittarius shoots his darts right to the heart of animal and vegetable earth, then men
wail still more. November the old Skands called Wind Monat, and allowed none to
venture seaward. All had then to bury themselves in their dens, live on salt meat and
corn, and pray for living and dead saints. It was therefore with no hypocrisy or romance,
that Jewish women met to weep for Tamuz, or that they watched the loved Adonis of
their harvest joys day by day sinking lower, and growing colder and more dead. They
saw fruits, flowers, crops, and all verdure droop with him; the heavens then lowered
and scowled angrily on them, and poured forth day by day colder and more merciless
rains, whilst seas and rivers roaring tempestuously added to their fears; and nature
not even leaving them their leafy retreats, they crouched and hid themselves away in
huts and caves, and holes, trying as best they could to withstand winter and his chilly
blasts. Is it to be wondered at, then, that as Typhon took his departure, these early
races welcomed with heart-felt joy the genial budding spring, and still more so
the fruit-bearing summer; that they laughed and sang with nature as she advanced
with warmth and smiles, and pregnant with all forms of life? Stilled then were the
turbulent rivers and noisy ocean, serene the skies, and balmy the air; all the animal
creation now responded glady to the desire nature implanted in them “to multiply
and replenish” the earth, and so repair the ravages of angry Typhon.
Let us now glance at the way in which our present kalendar—or meaaurement of
time–has been arrived at. The Kalends were the times “called out” to illiterate
people, and so named from the Greek Kalein. This proclamation took place on the
first of a moon or month, but the custom of “calling out” ceased in Rome about
450 A.D., when Kalendars—then called Fasti, were posted up for general information,
and the name kalendar became attached to such time-tables, because the word Kalend
was seen at the top denoting the first of each month..
The year of Romulus, 753 B.C., began with the vernal equinox, called the first
Kalend of March, and the sun was then aupposed to run through his course in ten
months of from thirty to thirty-one days, making 304 in all. July was called
Quintilis; August, Sextilis, and the others had names like ours. This arrangement,
of course, was found not to answer, and Numa Pompilius is credited with the cor