352 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OP MYTHS. 



or by swimming, into a long series of myths.^ It is not needful 

 to enter here into details of so well-known a feature of tlie 

 Mythology of the Old World, where Charon and his boat, the 

 procession of the dead by water to their long home, in modern 

 Brittany as in ancient Egypt, the setting afloat of the Scandi- 

 navian heroes in burning ships, or burying them in boats on 

 shore, are all instances of its prevalence. In North America 

 we hear sometimes of the bridge, but sometimes the water 

 must be passed in canoes. The souls come to a great lake 

 where there is a beautiful island, toward which they have to 

 paddle in a canoe of white shining stone. On the way there 

 arises a storm, and the wicked souls are wrecked, and the 

 heaps of their bones are to be seen under water, but the good 

 reach the happy island.^ So Charlevoix speaks of the souls 

 that are shipwrecked in crossing the river which they have to 

 pass on their long journey toward the west,^ and with this be- 

 lief the canoe-burial of the North- West and of Patagonia hangs 

 together. How the souls of the Ojibwas cross the deep and 

 rapid water to reach the land of bliss,* and the souls of the 

 Mandans travel on the lake by which the good reach their an- 

 cient village, while the wicked cannot get across for the bur- 

 den of their sins,^ I do not know ; but, like the Heaven- Bridge, 

 the Heaven-Gulf which has to be passed on the way to the 

 Land of Spirits, has a claim to careful discussion in the general 

 argument for the proof of histoi-ical connexion from Analogy 

 of Myths. 



The Fountain of Youth is known to the Mythology of India. 

 The A9vinas let the husband of Sukanya go into the lake, 

 whence the bather comes forth as old or as young as he may 

 choose ; aud elsewhere the " ageless river," vijarcl nadi, makes 

 the old young again by only seeing it, or perhaps by bathing 

 in its waters.^ Perhaps it is this fountain that Sir John Maun- 

 devile hears of early in the fourteenth century somewhere about 

 India. " Also toward the heed of that Forest, is the Cytee of 



1 Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. pp. 244, 205. Schirren, pp. 93, 110, etc. 

 ^ Schoolcraft, part i. p. 321. Mackenzie, p. cxix. 

 ^ Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 76. * Schoolcraft, part ii. p. 135. 



* Lewis & Clarke, p. 139. « Kuhn, pp. 128, 12. 



