effect in proving a common origin for the stories which contain them, unless closer evidence is forthcoming. Such tales belong to a rude and primitive state of the knowledge of the earth's surface, and what lies above and below it. The earth is a flat plain surrounded by the sea, and the sky forms a roof on which the sun, moon, and stars travel. The Polynesians, who thought, like so many other peoples, ancient and modern, that the sky descended at the horizon and enclosed the earth, still call foreigners papalangi, or " heaven-bursters," as having broken in from another world outside. The sky is to most savages what it is called in a South American language, mumeseke, that is, the "earth on high;" and we can quite understand the thought of the Mbocobis of Paraguay, that at death their souls would go up to heaven by the tree Llagdigua, which joins earth and sky.[1] There are holes or windows through the sky-roof or firmament, where the rain comes through, and if you climb high enough you can get through and visit the dwellers above, who look, and talk, and live very much in the same way as the people upon earth. As above the flat earth, so below it, there are regions inhabited by men or man-like creatures, who sometimes come up to the surface, and sometimes are visited by the inhabitants of the upper earth. We live as it were upon the ground floor of a great house, with upper storeys rising one over another above us, and cellars down below.
The Bridge of the Dead is one of the well-marked myths of the Old World. The Zarathustrian religion recognizes the
- ↑ Humboldt & Bonpland, vol. ii. p. 276. D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain;' vol. ii. p. 102. A closely related version of the heaven-tree among the Guarayos, Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.,' vol. i. p. 218. The following are to be added to the group of myths. The Waraus of the Essequibo district lived in heaven till Okonorote went after a shot arrow which had fallen through a hole in the sky; seeing the earth he made a rope ladder by which his people descended, till a fat one stuck in the hole and made return impossible, Bastian, 'Rechtsverhältnisse,' p. 291. The Ahts of Vancouver's Island know of an ascent by a rope to a region above the earth, Sproat. 'Scenes of Savage Life,' London, 1868, p. 176. In the White Nile district, the Kych and Bari say God made all men good, and they lived with him in heaven, but as some of them turned bad he let them down by a rope to the earth; the good could climb up again by this rope to the sky, where there was dancing and beer and all was joyous, but the rope broke (or a bird bit it through) so there is no going up to heaven now; it is closed to men. A. Kaufmann, 'Gebiet des Weissen Flusses,' Brixen, 1861, p. 125. [Note to 3rd Edition.]
