GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 343 



overtake it. He continued tlie cliase, however, until lie reached 

 the stars, where he found a fine plain, and a beaten road. In 

 this road he set a snare, made of his sister's hair, and then re- 

 turned to the earth. The sun appeared as usual in the heavens 

 in the morning, but at noon it was caught by the snare which 

 Chapewee had set for the squirrel, and the sky was instantly 

 darkened. Chapewee's family on this said to him, you must 

 have done something wrong when you were aloft, for we no 

 longer enjoy the light of day. ' I have/ replied he, ' but it was 

 unintentionally.' Chapewee tlien endeavoured to repair the 

 fault he had committed, and sent a number of animals up the 

 tree to release the sun by cutting the snare, but the intense 

 heat of that luminary reduced them all to ashes. The efforts 

 of the more active animals being thus frustrated, a ground 

 mole, though such a grovelling and awkward beast, succeeded 

 by burrowing under the road in the sky until it reached and 

 cut asunder the snare which bound the sun. It lost its eyes, 

 however, the instant it thrust its head into the light, and its 

 nose and teeth have ever since been brown, as if burnt."^ 



The origin of the story of the Sun-Catcher is not yet clear, 

 but probably some piece of unequivocal evidence will be found 

 to explain it. It may be noticed that there are to be found in 

 the Old World ideas of the sun being bound with a cord to 

 hold it in check. In Eeynard the Fox, the day is bound with 

 a rope, and its bonds only let it come slowly on. In a Hun- 

 garian tale midnight and dawn are bound, so that tiiey can get 

 no farther towards men.^ This notion is curiously like the 

 Peruvian story of the Inca who denied the pretension of the 

 Sun to be the doer of all things, for if he were free, he would 

 go and visit other parts of the heavens where he had never 

 been. He is, said the Inca, like a tied beast who goes ever 

 round and round in the same track.-^ 



The leo-end of the Ascent to Heaven by the Tree has just 



1 Eichardsoii, Narr. of Franklin's Second Exp.; London, 1828, p. 291. 



2 Grimm, D. M., p. 706. See Steinthal, ' Die Sage von Simson,' in Lazarus & 

 Steinthal's ' Zeitsclirift ;' Berlin, 1862, vol. ii. p. 141. 



3 Garcilaso de la Vega, part i. viii. 8. See also Acosta, Hist, del Nuevo Orbe, 

 chap. V. 



