160 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



black and red canoes hauled on the other side of the river, he halloed 

 for somebody to come and take him across. But the tumult was such 

 that they could not hear him. At last, after repeated efforts to 

 attract attention, having inadvertently yawned, one of them heard 

 the movement of his javvs.^ Having appi'ised his fellow spirits of the 

 fact some of them at length came across to fetch him. 



" But he had no sooner stepped into their black canoe than he sank 

 down with the part his foot had touched which seemed to be 

 elastic. Which seeing, the spirits at once smelt him. ' He does 

 not smell of smoke,' they said, and then they learned that he had not 

 been burnt. Therefore, madly seizing him in their fleshless arms, 

 they tossed him up in the air as one does a ball, until nothing remain- 

 ed of his former self but his empty skin. In that state they threw 

 Mm in the river where a big fish swallowed him at once. His 

 cousin who all this time had been in hiding then set out to return to 

 the land of the living and this time without any fear of the snakes 

 and toads, for his sojourn in the regions of the shades had made him 

 another man. While in the act of crawling back in the hollow tree 

 through which he had entered, he heard a terrific voice calling : 

 " Grandson ! grandson I " Then at the end of the subterranean 

 conduit, he came upon a giant who adopted him as his grandson. 

 After a very long series of wonderful experiences with this new 

 grandfather, he finally went up above and it is he that we now see 

 standing on the moon." 



Such is the Dene myth, or rather part of myth or legend, for what 

 they narrate of this couple is far too long to be repeated here. Now 

 is it not strange that we should find here among hyperborean Indians, 

 the belief in this very Tartarean river which plays such a role in the 

 mythologies of ancient Rome and Athens ? Is there any noticeable 

 difference between this broad river of the Denes and the Styx-atra of 

 Virgil ? And does not their hero's experience in the infernal regions 

 offer remarkable analogies with those ascribed by the Greeks and 

 Latins to Theseus and Hercules, Orpheus and -^neas 1 It is also 

 worthy of notice that tliis Ijelief of the Dends, as evinced by the 



1 To understand this particular circumstance of the Denes' legend, one must know that the 

 nation regard j'awning as ominous, and believe it to be a calling back of the departed ghosts to 

 earth. 



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