34(^ GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 



his house, where he had lain down in despair. He took his 

 canoe and made a noose of the creeper. It was the bad season, 

 when the sun is dull and heavy ; so up he came, half asleep 

 and tired, nor looked about him, but put his head into the 

 noose. He pulled and jerked, but Itu had made it too strong. 

 The man built his house — the sun cried and cried, till the 

 island of Savai was nearly drowned ; but not till the last stone 

 was laid, was he suffered to resume his career. None can break 

 the facehere. It is the Itu's cord.' 



Other versions of this episode in the great Maui-myth have 

 been taken down in the Pacific Islands,^ and a like variety is 

 found in the corresponding tales from North America. Among 

 the Ojibwas, the Sun- Catcher is evidently the same personage 

 as the Boy swallowed by the Fish in the last group of stories. 

 At the time when the animals reigned in the earth, they 

 had killed all but a girl and her httle brother, and these two 

 were living in fear and seclusion. The boy never grew bigger 

 than a little child, and his sister used to take him out with her 

 when she went to get food for the lodge-fire, for he was too 

 little to leave alone ; a big bird might have flown away with 

 him. One day she made him a bow and arrows, and told him 

 to hide where she had been chopping, and when the snow- 

 birds came to pick the worms out of the wood, he was to shoot 

 one. That day he tried in vain to kill one, but the next, to- 

 ward nightfall, she heard his little footsteps on the snow ; he 

 brought in a bu-d, and told his sister she was to take oS" the 

 skin and to put half the bird at a time into the pottage, for 

 till then men had not begun to eat animal food, but had lived 

 on vegetables alone. At last the boy had killed ten birds, and 

 his sister made him a little coat of the skins. " Sister,^' said 

 he one day, " are we all alone in the world ? Is there nobody 

 else living?'^ Then she told him that those they feared, and 

 who had destroyed their relatives, lived in a certain part, and 

 he must by no means go that way ; but this only made him 

 eager to go, and he took his bow and arrows and started. 



' Walpole, ' Four Years in the Pacific,' vol. ii. p. 375. 



" Turner, ' Polynesia,' pp. 2i5, 248. Tyerman & Bennet, vol. ii. p. 40 ; and 

 see vol. i. p. 433. Ellis, Polyn. Ees., vol. ii. p. 415. 



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