Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 29.djvu/22

10 Water for the labourers could always be obtained from the warm spring at the entrance of the Island.

The distilling or melting of sulphur to separate it from adherent earth is a matter of comparatively little expense or trouble. If the sulphur be abundant, it might be effected as in Sicily by using a part of it as fuel. It is not necessary to do it on the spot; it might be done at any place where bricks and fuel are cheap.

It is impossible to predict certain and lasting success to and undertaking of this kind, all depending on the quantity of sulphur present and the rapidity with which it will be replaced.

The situation of Barren Island offers every facility for a preliminary trial. The near proximity of the Andamans insures a supply of convict labour, timber, bricks, and lime. All the wood and iron work required for facilitating the transport of loads up and down the hill could be made on the Andamans. 



Among the many by-paths of inquiry which open in every direction from the broad beaten track of literature, few are more inviting than those which trace the mutual likenesses between the household legends of different nations, now widely separated by lands and seas, but once linked in close association. Mr. Dasent, in his recent work on the Popular Norse Legends, has followed out most successfully one of these paths, and has traced the same stories under varying names and localities, from nation to nation of the great Indo-Germanic family,—showing that everywhere the natural literature which bursts spontaneously from the heart of the people, bears evidence of a common origin for its favourite legends, though now lost in a far distant past.

The present paper is not, however, concerned with those popular tales which float from mouth to mouth among the unlettered peasants,—its business is with certain apologues of a more philosophic character, which are yet common to the East and West, and which must have flowed from one identical source, though the particular channels by which the commerce of ancient thought was conducted,