Logical Sample

The figures shown in the dry-paintings are conventionalized representations of the characters in Navaho mythology and of incidents in the myth. With how many such paintings the Navaho medicine-men are familiar is an unanswered question; but more than sixty have been noted, some of them most elaborate. In making them, the ground within the ceremonial hogan is evenly covered with fine brown earth, upon which the figures are drawn with fine sands and earths of many colors allowed to flow between the thumb and the first two fingers. The Navaho become so skilled in this work that they can draw a line as fine as a broad pencil mark. Many of the paintings are comparatively small, perhaps not more than four feet in diameter; others are as large as the hogan permits, sometimes twenty-four feet across. To make such a large painting requires the assistance of all the men who can conveniently work at it from early morning until mid-afternoon.

The immediate effects of this brilliant success were immense. Many of the Spanish tribes deserted the Carthaginian cause; and when Scipio took the field in the following year (B.C. 209) Mandonius and Indibilis, two of the most powerful and hitherto the most faithful supporters of Carthage, quitted the camp of Hasdrubal Barca, and awaited the arrival of the Roman commander. Hasdrubal was encamped in a strong position near the town of Baecula, in the upper valley of the Baetis (Guadalquiver), where he was attacked and defeated by Scipio. He succeeded, however, in making good his retreat, and retired into northern Spain. He subsequently crossed the Pyrenees, and marched into Italy to the assistance of his brother Hannibal, as already narrated.

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