Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/154

 ," he proceeded, "their idea was to get up to heaven without dying and turning to angels. The earliest nations in history have traditions and legends along this line. Of all the fancies, the imagination of the Indians took the cake. I mean the inhabitants of India, not the American Indians, misnamed by the first explorers under the impression their ships had struck the other side of the globe.

"One funny yarn was about a Brahmin, one of the Hindoo priests, who spied the god Indra's Wishing Cow wandering about on a meadow. The idea occurred to him that if he'd freeze tight to the cow's tail he'd get a lift up to their heaven on the top of the Himalayan mountains. So sure 'nuf, when the kindly cow had laid in her stock of hay and was ready to frisk back to heaven, the Brahmin, with a stranglehold on her tail, got in too, and saw the whole menagerie free. The next day, when the cow took a notion to slide down to earth again, she carried the passenger in the Pullman tail-car, and landed him safely on his native heath.

"Very proud of his feat, he told the neighbors and got the whole gang worked up for