462 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



tail of the ox throws Hght upon ancient practices as to dying 

 men. " The Hindus offer a black cow to the Brahmans in 

 order to secure their passage across the Vaitarani, the river of 

 death, and will often die grasping the cow's tail as if to swim 

 across in herdsman's fashion, holding on to a cow."''' This 

 probably explains why, in Maori, waka means "canoe" and 

 "medium of a deity;" why the Samoan va'a (^'aZ:aj meant 

 both "canoe" and "priest." This priest or medium shadowed 

 the boat or sacred vacca which took the soul across to the 

 gods — a meaning plainly shown in the Samoan word va'aaloa 

 (vaka-aloa), "the canoe in which souls were ferried across to 

 the other world." How widespread is this idea of the boat 

 of death ! We see Charon ferrying the souls of the Greeks 

 across the dark river, and the souls of the Breton dead passing 

 across in a boat to England. i 



This mode of navigation was the first used in the treeless 

 Aryan land — the vacca (cow), as " bearer," was the first vaka 

 (canoe). But a further step was made as time went on. The 

 boat was made from the hide — first as inflated in bags. In 

 Layard's " Nineveh and Babylon" is a representation of " a 

 kellek, or raft of skins, on the Tigris" (Plate XXXVI., fig. 1). 

 Here a light framework of wood, with a house or tent thereon, 

 is supported upon a number of inflated skins. This boat of 

 to-day, so far from being a modern idea, was the ancient 

 mode of conveyance thousands of years ago. At page 301 

 (" Nineveh," I.e.) the author says, " Merchandise and travellers 

 descended the rivers upon rafts of skins." And at page 77 is 

 an engraving of a bas-relief from Kouyunjik, an old Assyrian 

 piece of sculpture, on which identically the same form of boat 

 is represented— viz., of woodwork superimposed upon inflated 

 hides (Plate XXXVL, fig. 2). 



The next page shows an engraving of another Assyrian 

 sculpture, having figures of single persons swimming across a 

 river, each with an inflated skin as a boat (Plate XXX VI., 

 fig. 3). To this day a similar habit of the dwellers in Asia may 

 be noticed. In the " Journey to the Source of the Oxus," p. 64, 

 we find, "Early in the forenoon they repair to the river or 

 canal, and there, upon their mussiiks (inflated hides), float and 

 talk till sunset. I have seen in one group a father and two 

 children, the latter on dried elongated gourds, clinging to their 

 parent, who bestrode a good-sized mussuk. Close to them 

 came two grey-haired men, apparently hugging each other, for 

 they rode upon the same inflated skin, which, but for the 

 -closeness with which they embraced it, would soon have parted 



* See Colebrook, "Essays," vol. i., p. 1775; Ward's "Hindoos," 

 vol. ii., pp. 02, 284, MSI (quoted by Tylor) ; "Primitive Culture," vol. i., 

 ■427 : also " Kaces of Mankind." 



t For similar Irish legend sec O'Donovan's " Irish Grammar," p. 440. 



