men live for ever;' and after a long quarrel the former gained the victory. Others, again, hold that there was a race between a snake and a louse as to which should first reach mankind; if the snake arrived first they should live for ever, if the louse arrived first they must die. The snake got a long start, but fell over a high precipice by the way, and had to make a long detour, so that the louse won the race and brought death with it.[1] These myths, by their very meaninglessness and incoherence, seem to show that they come from elsewhere, and are fragments of older beliefs whose original point and meaning is forgotten. If we look around in the world, we shall find remarkable analogies among the most distant races. The second myth (that of the quarrel) reappears in the Fiji Islands, where the moon wrangles with a rat, maintaining that men ought to die and come to life again as she herself does; while the rat maintains that they ought rather to die like rats—and he gets the best of it. Among the Indians it is two wolf-brothers, ancestors of the race, who quarrel. The younger says: 'When a man dies, let him come back the following day so that his friends may rejoice.' 'No,' says the elder, 'let the dead never
- ↑ P. Egede, Continuation af Relationerne, pp. 32, 80; Efterretninger om Grönland, pp. 127, 106. H. Egede, Grönlands Perlustration, p. 117.
