Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/637

Rh responding picture of that part of it which is within its vision. Islanders regard their groups as their world, and finish out the picture with fantastic conceptions of the ocean-regions beyond. Highlanders, who, like the ancient Greeks, also see the sea-shore, figure their earth as a cup or a hollowed surface into which the waters run together. The Grecian view held its ground till the Crusades, unaltered even as to its particulars, and is still entertained by the lazzaroni of Naples. People who live in high mountain-regions, and never look upon extensive plains, regard the earth as a sublime range, a massive dome in which peak towers above peak, as the Caucasians do, or as a lofty cone, like the Thibetans. On conceptions like these stand those religious systems which place the seat of the gods, the first home of the human race, or the abode of the dead, among lofty mountains. The Hindoos called Meru, the Thracians Olympus, the residence of the gods. East African tribes, such as the Masais, the Wakamba, the Wakwasi, and the Gallas, say that their gods dwell in Kilimanjaro or Kenia, or a third equally lofty mountain of their regions. And the Indians of the American prairies believe that the happy hunting-grounds of their departed are to be found in the Rocky Mountains.

The conceptions that are formed of the regions of the earth lying outside of vision are equally diversified. In classical antiquity, the earth was imagined to be surrounded by the sea, Oceanus; or the heavenly vault to rest upon mountain-ranges or isolated peaks. The Caroline-Islanders represent the region beyond the Marianne Archipelago, and north of their home, as one in which the sky gradually approaches the earth, and finally rests upon it, but not so closely but what a space is left that a man can creep through. To the Esquimaux of Greenland the sky seems to be a steep, high mountain in the north, around which the stars revolve, while the earth rests upon props that would have decayed, crumbled, and disappeared long ago, if it had not been for the mummery of witches.

From this we may pass to a wider view, which attempts to form an idea of the back side of the earth. The Kamchatkadales conceive that the earth is flat, and that its under side forms a lower world, under which is another land; or as, according to Steller, they expressed it, the earth is the reverse of a sky under which is still another world; so that they consider the world as a vessel of three stories. The conception of the earth as a flat surface lies at the foundation of most of these myths; but there are a few of them that rest on better ideas. According to Newbold, some of the Malays regard the earth as round, like an egg. The Chippewas and Winnebagoes, according to Lawson, and the Duphlas of Assam, regard the earth as a square, with four corners; but the imagination of that shape is exceptional.

What holds the visible world together, and what supports the earth in it, are also questions that have occurred to primitive men; and their attempts to solve these questions also carry with them efforts