Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/372

362 state. The Milky Way, which among the North American Indians is the road of souls to the other world, has also a claim to be considered. As in the Old World, so in the New, the Bridge of the Dead is but an incident, sometimes, but not always or even mostly, introduced into a wider belief that after death the soul of man comes to a great gulf or stream, which it has to pass to reach the country that lies beyond the grave. The Mythology of Polynesia, though it wants the Bridge, develops the idea of the gulf which the souls have to pass, in canoes or by swimming, into a long series of myths. It is not needful to enter here into details of so well-known a feature of the Mythology of the Old World, where the Vedic Yama, King of the Dead, crossed the rapid waters and showed the way to our Aryan fathers; where the modern Hindu hopes by grasping the cow's tail at death to be safely ferried over the dreadful river Vaitaranî; where Charon and his boat, the procession of the dead by water to their long home in modern Brittany as in ancient Egypt, the setting afloat of the Scandinavian heroes in burning ships or burying them in boats on shore, are all instances of its prevalence. In barbaric districts, myths of the river of death may be instanced alike among the Finns and the Guinea negroes, among the Khonds of Orissa and the Dayaks of Borneo. In North America we hear sometimes of the bridge, but sometimes the water must be passed in canoes. The souls come to a great lake where there is a beautiful island, towards which they have to paddle in a canoe of white shining stone. On the way there arises a storm, and the wicked souls are wrecked, and the heaps of their bones are to be seen under water, but the good reach the happy island. So Charlevoix speaks of the souls that are shipwrecked in crossing the river which they have to pass on their long journey toward the west, and with this belief the canoe-burial of the North- West and of Patagonia hangs together.