GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 349 



up and down between the surface of tlie ground and tlie sky 

 or the regions below ; the rank spear-grass^ a rope or thong, 

 a spider's web^ a ladder of iron or gold, a column of smoke, or 

 the rainbow. It must be remembered in discussing such tales, 

 that the idea of climbing, for instance, from earth to heaven 

 by a tree, fantastic as it may seem to a civilized man of mo- 

 dern times, is in a different grade of culture quite a simple and 

 natural idea, and too much stress must not be laid on bare 

 coincidences to this effect in proving a common origin for the 

 stories which contain them, unless closer evidence is forth- 

 coming. Such tales belong to a rude and primitive state of 

 knowledge of the earth's surface, and what lies above and be- 

 low it. The earth is a flat plain surrounded by the sea, and 

 the sky forms a roof on which the sun, moon, and stars travel. 

 The Polynesians, who thought, like so many other peoples, 

 ancient and modern, that the sky descended at the horizon 

 and enclosed the earth, still call foreigners papalangi, or 

 " heaven-bursters," as having broken in from another world 

 outside. The sky is to most savages what it is called in a 

 South American language, mumeseke, that is, the " earth on 

 high."^ There are holes or windows through this roof or tir- 

 mament, where the rain comes through, and if you climb high 

 enough you can get through and visit the dwellers above, who 

 look, and talk, and live very much in the same way as the 

 people upon earth. As above the flat earth, so below it, there 

 are regions inhabited by men or man-like creatures, who some- 

 times come up to the surface, and sometimes are visited by the 

 inhabitants of the upper earth. We live as it were upon the 

 ground floor of a great house, with upper storeys rising one 

 over another above us, and cellars down below. 



The Bridge of the Dead is one of the well-marked myths of 

 the Old World. Over the midst of the Moslem hell stretches 

 the bridge Es-Sirat, finer than a hair, and shai-per than the 

 edge of a sword. There all souls of the dead must pass along, 

 but while the good reach the other side in safety, the wicked 

 fall off into the abyss. The Jews, too, have their bridge of 

 hell, narrow as a thread, but it is only the souls of the unbe- 

 ' Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. ii. p. 276. 



