Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/380

370 has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian Thau." Even in Australia something similar is to be found. The Biam is held to be like a black, but deformed in his lower extremities; the natives say they got many of the songs sung at their dances from him, but he also causes diseases, especially one which marks the face like small-pox.

The Diable Boiteux of South America is thus described by Pöppig, in his account of the life of the forest Indians of Mainas. "A ghostly being, the Uchuclla-chaqui or Lame-foot, alone troubles the source of his best pleasure and his livelihood. Where the forest is darkest, where only the light-avoiding amphibia and. the nocturnal birds dwell, lives this dangerous creature, and endeavours, by putting on some friendly shape, to lure the Indian to his destruction. As the sociable hunters do, it gives the well understood signs, and, never reached itself, entices the deluded victim deeper and deeper into the solitude, disappearing with a shout of mocking laughter when the path home is lost, and the terrors of the wilderness are increasing with the growing shadows of night. Sometimes it separates companions who have gone hunting together, by appearing first in one place, then in another in an altered form; but it never can deceive the wary hunter who in distrust examines the footsteps of his enemy. Hardly has he caught sight of the quite unequal size of the impressions of the feet, when he hastens back, and for long after no one dares to make an expedition into the wilderness, for the visits of the fiend are only for a time." In South America, as in Africa, this is not a mere local tale, but a widely spread belief.

In conclusion, the analogies between the Mythology of America and of the rest of the world which have been here enumerated, when taken together with the many more which come into view in studying a wider range of native American traditions, and after full allowance has been made for independent coincidences, seem to me to warrant some expectation that the American