350 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OP MYTHS. 



lievers wlio tave to pass there. " The brig of dread, no brader 

 than a thread/' is in an old Enghsh wake-song from the 

 North Country, and the bridge where the disembodied souls 

 of the dead pass the river Gjoll is part and parcel of the story 

 of Balder, in the Prose Edda.^ At this day, the Karens of 

 Burmah tie strings across the rivers to serve as bridges for the 

 ghosts of the dead to pass over to their graves.^ Unlike 

 the last two stories, the Heaven-Bridge does not seem to be- 

 long to Polynesia, but then the South Sea Islanders have 

 little to do with bridges. In Java, however, it is found, but in 

 company with purely Indian matter, such as the Sapta Patala, 

 the seven regions of hell, so iliat it is likely that it is not a real 

 Malay belief, but came across from Asia. Batara Guru built a 

 wall of stone round Suralaya, the Dwelling of the Gods, and 

 round it he formed the Abyss Kawah, and set a bridge over it 

 to reach the single opening in the Wall of Heaven. Off this 

 bridge the evildoers fall into the depths below. ^ 



In North America, the Bridge of the Dead forms part of the 

 Indian mythology. The Minnetarees, it is recorded in the ac- 

 count of Major Long's expedition, which was published in 1823, 

 believe that, in then' way to the mansions of their ancestors 

 after death, they have to cross a narrow footing over a rapid 

 river, where the good warriors and hunters pass, but the 

 worthless ones fall in.* Catlin's account of the Choctaw belief 

 is as follows : — " Our people all believe that the spirit lives in 

 a future state ; that it has a great distance to travel after death 

 towards the west — that it has to cross a dreadful deep and rapid 

 stream, which is hemmed in on both sides by high and rugged 

 hills — over this stream, from hill to hill, there lies a long and 

 slippery pine-log, with the bai'k peeled off, over which the dead 

 have to pass to the delightful hunting-grounds. On the other 

 side of the stream there are six persons of the good hunting- 

 grounds with rocks in their hands, which they throw at them 

 all when they are on the middle of the log. The good walk on 

 safely to the good huntinar-grounds. . . . The wicked see the 

 stones coming, and try to dodge, by which they fall down from 



- ' Lane, vol. i. p. 95. Grimm, D. M., p. 794. See Bastian, vol. ii. p. 340. 

 2 Mrs. Mason, p. 73. ■'' Schirren, pp. 122, 125. . * Long's Exp., vol. i.p. 280. 



