Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/361

Rh overtake it. He continued the chase, however, until he reached the stars, where he found a fine plain, and a beaten road. In this road he set a snare, made of his sister's hair, and then re- turned to the earth. The sun appeared as usual in the heavens in the morning, hut at noon it was caught by the snare which Chapewee had set for the squirrel, and the sky was instantly darkened. Chapewee's family on this said to him, 'You must have done something wrong when you were aloft, for we no longer enjoy the light of day.' 'I have,' replied he, 'but it was unintentionally.' Chapewee then endeavoured to repair the fault he had committed, and sent a number of animals up the tree to release the sun by cutting the snare, but the intense heat of that luminary reduced them all to ashes. The efforts of the more active animals being thus frustrated, a ground mole, though such a grovelling and awkward beast, succeeded by burrowing under the road in the sky until it reached and cut asunder the snare which bound the sun. It lost its eyes, however, the instant it thrust its head into the light, and its nose and teeth have ever since been brown, as if burnt."

In former editions of this work it was remarked that the origin of the story of the Sun-Catcher is not yet clear, but probably some piece of unequivocal evidence will be found to explain it. There has since been published by the Rev. W. W. Gill a version of the Maui-myth from the Hervey Islands, which looks as though it might be this expected key. Maui plaited six great cocoa-nut fibre ropes to make his royal nooses to catch the sun- god, Rā; the first noose he set at the opening where the sun climbs up from Avaiki, the under-world, and the other five one after another further on in the sun's path; as Rā came up in the morning, Maui pulled the first slip-knot, which held him by the feet, the next by the knees, and so on, till the last noose closed round his neck, and Maui made him fast to a point of rock; then Rā, nearly strangled, confessed himself conquered, and promised henceforth to go more slowly through the heavens, that men might have time to got easily through their work. "The sun-god Rā was now allowed to proceed on his way; but Maui wisely declined to take on these ropes, wishing to keep Rā