for if it were round, people would fall off; it is the wrong side of another heaven, which covers another earth below, whither the dead will go down to their new life, and so, as Steller says, their mundane system is like a tub with three bottoms.[1] In North America, the Tacullis held that the soul goes after death into the bowels of the earth, whence it can come back in human shape to visit friends.[2] In South America, Brazilian souls travel down to the world below in the West, and Patagonian souls will depart to enjoy eternal drunkenness in the caves of their ancestral deities.[3] The New Zealander who says 'The sun has returned to Hades' (kua hoki mai te Ra ki te Rua), simply means that it has set. When a Samoan Islander dies, the host of spirits that surround the house, waiting to convey his soul away, set out with him crossing the land and swimming the sea, to the entrance of the spirit-world. This is at the westernmost point of the westernmost island, Savaii, and there one may see the two circular holes or basins where souls descend, chiefs by the bigger and plebeians by the smaller, into the regions of the underworld. There below is a heaven, earth, and sea, and people with real bodies, planting, fishing, cooking, as in the present life; but at night their bodies become like a confused collection of fiery sparks, and in this state during the hours of darkness they come up to revisit their former abodes, retiring at dawn to the bush or to the lower regions.[4] For the state of thought on this subject among rude African tribes, it is enough to cite the Zulus, who at death will descend to live in Hades among their ancestors, the 'Abapansi,' the 'people underground.'[5] Among rude Asiatic tribes, such an example may be taken from the
- ↑ Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 269.
- ↑ Harmon, 'Journal,' p. 299; see Lewis and Clarke, p. 139 (Mandans).
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 140, 287; see Humboldt and Bonpland, 'Voy.' vol. iii. p. 132; Falkner, 'Patagonia,' p. 114.
- ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 232; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 235.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 317, &c.; Arbousset and Daumas, p. 474. See also Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 157.
