116 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



held it to be the footprint of leu^ and Christians have been 

 divided between the conflicting claims of St. Thomas and the 

 Eunuch of Candace^ Queen of Ethiopia.^ The followers of 

 these difierent faiths have found holy footprints in many coun- 

 tries of the Old World, and the Christians have carried the 

 idea into various parts of Europe, where saints have left their 

 footmarks ; while, even in America, St. Thomas left his foot- 

 steps on the shores of Bahia, as a record of his mythic 

 journey.^ 



For all we know, the whole mass of the Old World footprint- 

 myths may have had but a single origin, and have travelled 

 from one people to another. The story is found, too, in the 

 Pacific Islands, for in Samoa two hollow places, near six feet 

 long, in a rock, are shown as the footprints of Tiitii, where he 

 stood when he pushed the heavens up from the earth .^ But 

 there are reasons which may make us hesitate to consider the 

 great Polynesian mythology as independent of Asiatic in- 

 fluence. Even in North America., at the edge of the Great 

 Pipestone Quarry, where the Great Spirit stood when the 

 blood of the bufialos he was devouring ran down upon the 

 stone and turned it red, there his footsteps are to be seen 

 deeply marked in the rock, in the form of the track of a great 

 bird.'' 



There are three kinds of prints in the rock which may have 

 served as a foundation for such tales as these. In many parts 

 of the world there are fossil footprints of birds and beasts, 

 many of huge size. The North American Indians also, whose 

 attention is specially alive to the footprints of men and animals, 

 very often carve them on rocks, sometimes with figures of the 

 animals to which they belong. These footprints are some- 

 times so naturally done as to be mistaken for real ones. The 

 rock of which Andersson heard in South Africa, " in which the 

 tracks of aU the difierent animals indigenous to the country 



> Tennent, ' Ceylon ;' vol. ii. p. 132. Scberzer, Toy. of the Novara, E. Tr.; Lon- 

 don, 1861, etc., vol. i. p. 413. 



^ Soutliey, ' History of Brazil ;' London, 1822, vol. i. ; Sup. p. xx. 



' Eev. G-. Turner, ' Nineteen Years in Polynesia;' London, 1861, p. 245. 



* CatHn, vol. ii. p. 165, etc. 



