MATTHEWS. ] MYTH: THE JOURNEY TO GEPENTSA. 389 
made a hearty meal. The Navajo then had neither horses nor asses; 
they could not carry stone metates when they traveled, as they do now; 
they ground their seeds with such stones as they could find anywhere. 
The old man advised that they should cross the river at this point and 
he directed his sons to go to the river and look fora ford. After a time 
they returned and related that they had found a place where the stream 
was mostly knee deep, and where, in the deepest part, it did not come 
above their hips, and they thought all would be able to cross there. The 
father named the hour of bihilgdhigi (when it gets warm, i. e., about 10 
a. m.), on the morrow, as the time they should ford the San Juan; so 
next morning at the appointed time they crossed. They traveled up 
the north bank until they came to a small affluent whose source was in 
(epéntsa. Here they left the main river and followed the branch until 
night approached, when they made camp. 
15. They moved on next day and came close to Gepéntsa, to a soil 
covered with tracks of deer and of other great animals of the chase. 
Here they encamped, and on the following morning the young men set 
out by different ways in the direction of the mountain to hunt; but at 
night they returned empty handed. Thus they hunted four days unsuc- 
cessfully. Every day while his sons were gone the old man busied him- 
self cutting down saplings with his stone ax and building a house, and 
the daughters gathered seeds, which constituted the only food of the 
family. As the saplings were abundant and close to the camp, the old 
man built his house fast, and had it finished at nightfall on the fourth 
day, when his sons returned from their fruitless labors, They entered 
the lodge and sat down. They were weary and hungry and their bodies 
were badly torn by the thorns and thick copse of the mountains. Their 
father spoke not a word to them as they entered; he did not even look 
at them; he seemed to be lost in deep contemplation; so the young 
men said nothing, and all were silent. At length the old man looked 
up and broke the silence, saying, “Aqalani cactcini!” (Welcome, my 
children.) ‘Again you have returned to the lodge without food. What 
does it avail that you go out every day to hunt when you bring home 
nothing? You kill nothing because you know nothing. If you had 
knowledge you would be successful. I pity you.” The young men made 
no reply, but lay down and went to sleep. 
16. At dawn the old man woke them and said: ‘ Go out, my children, 
and build a sweat-house, and make a fire to heat stones for the bath, 
and build the sweat-house only as I will tell you. Make the frame of 
four different kinds of wood. Put kag (juniper) in the east, tse‘iscazi 
(mountain mahogany) in the south, ¢estsi™ (pinon) in the west, and 
awétsal (cliff rose) in the north; join them together at the top and cover 
them with any shrubs you choose. Get two small forked sticks, the 
length of the forearm, to pass the hot stones into the sweat-house, and 
one long stick to poke the stones out of the fire, and let all these sticks 
be such as have their bark abraded by the antlers of the deer. Take 
