62 Notes Antiquarian and Mythical. [no. 7, new series. 



supposed by some to have led his Asen — Asian or Scythian hordes 

 ■ — from the regions between the Euxine and Caspian to Northern 

 Europe, but the Chinese mythology has generally appeared to 

 stand alone and unconnected. There is, however, one striking 

 myth common to Scandinavian and Chinese traditions. According 

 to the Woo-yun-leih-nien-ke, as given in GutzlafT's " China Open- 

 ed," Vol. I. p. 299, " an original etherial principle by its vapour 

 impregnated matter, so as to produce Heaven and Earth, and the 

 Yong and Yin, and having become pregnant, Pivankoo the first of 

 this race was born, when he died the hair of his body was meta- 

 morphosed into wind and clouds, his voice into thunder, his left 

 eye became the sun, the right the moon, the various members of 

 his body the four poles and five high mountains, his blood and 

 fluids rivers and streams : his sinews and arteries were changed 

 into land, the hair into stars, the teeth and bones into minerals, 

 and the vermin adhering to the body were transformed into men." 

 This myth is identical with the story in the Edda of the giant 

 Ymir, a personification of chaos or unformed primal matter who 

 was born from the living drops that were formed from the melting 

 of the icy vapours exhaled from the abyss. Whilst he slept a man 

 and a woman sprang from an extraordinary sweat under his left arm. 

 Odin and his brethren slew him, and formed the universe from his 

 body precisely as in the Chinese legend : his scull became the 

 vault of heaven, his brains were tossed up and became the clouds, 

 his teeth and bones formed the rocks and hills, his blood and juices 

 the sea and rivers, his flesh the earth, &c. It is remarkable that 

 so peculiar a myth should appear in the cosmogonies of such very 

 widely separated and dissimilar countries as China and Scandina- 

 via, exactly corresponding in both, and apparently peculiar to 

 them. 



IV. 



In Herr von Werne's adventurous voyage up the White Nile, 

 the furthest region he attained was the country of the Bori in 4 Q 

 North latitude ; he describes it as inhabited by " an exceedingly 

 numerous nation of tall and powerful build, the men six and a half 

 to seven French feet in height, equal to 7 and 7| English feet, — 

 colossal figures, admirably proportioned and magnificently limbed, 

 black, but with nothing of the usual Negro character in their 



