Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/638

622 to account for particular phenomena of the earth's surface, and such convulsions as earthquakes. Some have tried to compare the earth with an egg in a vessel of water, or with the yolk in the egg; and cosmologies involving this idea are widely spread in Southern Asia, Polynesia, and Melanesia. The Tonga-Islanders say that a god they call Maui carries the earth on his back, and whenever he moves, to turn the other side, or falls asleep, there is an earthquake; and the people were accustomed to beat the ground, with a great cry, to make Maui be quiet. The Khasias, in Assam, say that everything would be destroyed by earthquakes if God did not hold the earth in his hands. The priestly philosophy of the Hawaiians figured the earth as a great mass which the earth-shaker, or earthquake-god, laid upon the central fire. The earth on its side supported the sky by means of two or four pillars. The heaven of the Maories and the Soma of the Vedas are also supported by pillars. The manner in which the sky was in the beginning lifted up on these pillars is carefully described in the Polynesian myth, which relates that the gods Maui and Rua together held the sky on their knees, then lifted it upon their backs, and then on their hands. Other stories relate that, while the sky was resting on the broad leaves of the teva-plant, Rua raised it a little higher up by putting sticks under it, and then the stalwart Maui put his hands to it. In Celebes an earthquake is fabled to take place whenever Eber, who is supposed to be the earth-bearer, rubs himself against a tree and shakes his load. The world-bearing frog of the Mongol lamas, the world-ox of the Moslems, and the gigantic Omophore of the Manichaean cosmogony, are all creatures that carry the world on their back or head, and shake it whenever they stretch themselves or turn around. A similar part is performed in European mythologies by the Scandinavian Loki, who is bound with iron chains in his subterranean cave; by Prometheus, trying to break his chains; and by the Lettish Drebkuls. A branch of the Yuma Indians in Colorado are in dread of an evil spirit that is sleeping on Mount Avicome, and causes a slight earthquake when he moves uneasily, and a dangerous one when he turns clear over. The Caribs were accustomed to say, when there was an earthquake, that Mother Earth was dancing. The Iroquois, according to the testimony of many travelers, conceived the earth as an island in the sea, resting on the back of a huge tortoise. Floods occurred whenever the tortoise sank under the water, earthquakes when it shook itself or changed its position. The Hindoos imagined an earth-bearing elephant, standing on the tortoise, and attributed terrestrial convulsions to his motions. The Duphlas of Assam imagined four elephants supporting the four corners of the earth, which had to suffer when either of its bearers became uneasy.

According to the Kamchatkadales, earthquakes originate when the dogs of the earthquake-god, who travels in a sleigh under the ground, shake the fleas in the snow from themselves. The Siberian hunting