Kamchadal drives his dog-sledge; the Zulu milks his cows and drives his cattle to kraal; South American tribes live on, whole or mutilated, healthy or sick, as they left this world, leading their old lives, and having their wives with them again, though indeed, as the Araucanians said, they "have no more children, for they are but souls.[1] Soul-land is dream-land in its shadowy unreal pictures, for which, nevertheless, material reality so plainly furnished the models, and it is dream-land also in its vivid idealization of the soberer thoughts and feelings of waking life,
'There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparel'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.'
Well might the Mohawk Indian describe the good land of paradise, as he had seen it in a dream. The shade of the Ojibwa follows a wide and beaten path that leads toward the West, he crosses a deep and rapid water, and reaching a country full of game and all things the Indian covets, he joins his kindred in their long lodge.[2] So, on the southern continent, the Bolivian Yuracarés will go, all of them, to a future life where there will be plenty of hunting, and Brazilian forest-tribes will find a pleasant forest full of calabash-trees and game, where the souls of the dead will live happily in company.[3] The Greenlanders hoped that their souls pale, soft, disembodied forms which the living could not grasp would lead a life better than that of earth, and never ceasing. It might be in heaven, reached by the
- ↑ Cross, 'Karens,' l.c. pp. 309, 313; Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1634, p. 16; Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 272; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 316; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. ii. pp. 310, 315; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 139,286.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologic,' p. 224; Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part ii. p. 135.
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. i. p. 364; Spix and Martius, 'Brasilien,' vol. i. p. 383; De Laet, Novus Orbis, xv. 2.
