Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/375

Rh reviving water, and is cured; or when the Moslem associates the drinking from the fountain with Elijah of the chariot of fire and horses of fire, or with St. George, the favourite mediæval bearer of the great Sun-myth. Without further discussing the origin of these myths, it may suffice to point out their occurrence in the New World. The Aleutian islanders had their legend that in the early times men were immortal, and when they grew old had but to spring from a high mountain into a lake whence they came forth in renewed youth. In the West Indies, early in the sixteenth century, Gomara relates that Juan Ponce de Leon, having his government taken from him, and thus finding himself rich and without charge, fitted out two caravels, and went to seek for the island of Boyuca, where the Indians said there was the fountain that turned old men back into youths (a perennial spring, says Peter Martyr, so noble that the drinking of its waters made old men young again). For six months he went lost and famishing among many islands, but of such a fountain he found no trace. Then he came to Bimini, and discovered Florida on Pascua Florida (Easter Sunday), wherefrom he gave the country its name.

To proceed now to the story of the Tail-Fisher. Dr. Dasent, who, in his admirable Introduction to the Norse Tales, has taken the lead in the extension of the argument from Comparative Mythology beyond the limited range within which it is aided by History and Language, has brought the popular tales of Africa and Europe into close connexion by adducing, among others, the unmistakeable common origin of the Norse Tale of the Bear who, at the instigation of the Fox, fishes with his tail through a hole in the ice till it is frozen in, and then pulls at it till it comes off, and the story from Bornu of the Hyaena who puts his tail into the hole, that the Weasel may fasten the meat to it, but the Weasel fastens a stick to it instead, and the Hyæna pulls till his tail breaks; both stories accounting in a similar way, but with a proper difference of