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Bentarasko Benta Section 20
Page 05
John did not return to England until near the middle of December, but even at that date Innocent III had not decided the question of the Canterbury election. On December 20 he declared against the claim of the bishops and against the first secret election by the monks, and under his influence the deputation from Canterbury elected an Englishman and cardinal highly respected at Rome both for his character and for his learning, Stephen of Langton. The representatives of the king at Rome refused to agree to this election, and the pope himself wrote to John urging him to accept the new archbishop, but taking care to make it clear that the consent of the king was not essential, and indeed he did not wait for it. After correspondence with John in which the king's anger and his refusal to accept Langton were plainly expressed, on June 17, 1207, he consecrated Stephen archbishop. John's answer was the confiscation of the lands of the whole archbishopric, apparently those of the convent as well as those of the archbishop, and the expulsion of the monks from the country as traitors, while the trial in England of all appeals to the pope was forbidden.
Although from the moment the gills disappear the frog is a true land animal, he is obliged, on account of the fish-like character of his young, to lay his eggs in the water. For this purpose the frogs enter the pools in early spring. The surface of every country pond swarms with the bright-eyed little creatures. They have awakened from a long, cold, winter sleep, to find the spring about them and within them. Life has suddenly become abundant and joyous. Their sluggish blood flows faster, their hearts beat quicker; they leap, they swim, they swell out their throats and call to each other in various keys. The toads are with them, and the pretty tree-frogs that change their color to suit their emotions. And all are rapturously screaming. Their voices are not musical, according to man's standard, but seem to afford great satisfaction to the performers in the shrill orchestra of the swamps, who thus give vent to the flood of life that sweeps through them after the still, icy winter.
Because of their pastoral life the Navaho are not villagers. Their dome-shaped, earth-covered hogans are usually grouped two or three in the same locality. The summer house is a rude brush shelter, usually made with four corner posts, a flat top of brush, and a windbreak of the same material as a protection against the hot desert siroccos. The hogan proper, used for storage during the summer, affords a warm and comfortable shelter to its occupants through the cold winters of their high altitude. When a hogan is built it is ceremonially consecrated, and if an occupant should die in it, it is forever deserted and is called _tsi{~COMBINING BREVE~}ndi hogan_, "evil house." No Navaho will go near such a house or touch anything taken from it. If a meal were cooked with decayed wood from a hogan a hundred years deserted, a Navaho, even if starving, could not be induced to partake of it. Thus strong are the religious beliefs of this primitive people.
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