12 INTRODUCTION. 



exactly into its fitting place. " The Lion, it is said^ was ill, and 

 they all went to see him in his suffering. But the Jackal did 

 not go, because the traces of the people who went to see him 

 did not turn back.'^ 



As it happens, we know from other sources enough to ex- 

 plain the appearance in South Africa of stories from Reynard 

 and the Arabian Nights by referring them to European or 

 Moslem influence. But even without such knowledge, the 

 tales themselves prove an historical connection, near or remote, 

 between Europe, Egypt, and South Africa. To try to make 

 such evidence stand alone is a more ambitious task. In a 

 chapter on the Geographical Distribution of Myths, I have 

 compared a series of stories collected on the American Conti- 

 nent with their analogues elsewhere, endeavouring thereby to 

 show an historical connection between the mythology of Ame- 

 rica and that of the rest of the world, but with what success 

 the reader must decide. In another chapter, some remarkable 

 customs, which are found spread over distant tracts of country, 

 are examined in order to ascertain, if possible, whether any 

 historical argument may be grounded upon them. 



For the errors which no doubt abound in the present essays, 

 and for the superficial working of a great subject, a word may 

 be said in apology. In discussing questions in which some- 

 times the leading facts have never before been even roughly 

 grouped, it is very difficult not only to reject the wrong evi- 

 dence, but to reproduce the right with accuracy, and the way 

 in which new information comes in, which quite alters the face 

 of the old, does not tend to promote over-confidence in first re- 

 sults. For instance, after having followed other observers in 

 setting down as peculiar to the South Sea Islands, in or near 

 the Samoan group, an ingenious little drilling instrument 

 which will be hereafter described, I found it kept in stock in 

 the London tool shops ; mistakes of this kind must be frequent 

 till our knowledge of the lower civilization is much more tho- 

 roughly collected and sifted. More accuracy might indeed be 

 obtained by keeping to a very small number of subjects, but 

 our accounts of the culture of the lower races, being mostly 

 unclassified, have to be gone tlirough as a whole, and up to a 



