This was the "Pend d' Oreilles," of Oregon, and even they believed in charms, omens, dreams, and guardian spirits. The Iroquois, Algonquins, Sioux, Dakotas, Navajos, Natchez, and the rest of the many varieties of North American Indians shared this common belief. The red men mostly believed in the sun as their future home, says Brinton. The Mexicans had a future paradise, and said to the dying: "Sir, or lady, awake, the dawn appears, the light is approaching, the birds begin their songs of welcome," for to them, when the man died, he awoke out of this dream of life into a future reality.

Brinton also mentions one curious analogy of belief in many nations. We learn that the Greeks supposed that every soul must cross the river Styx in Charon's boat; that the Persians thought the departed must cross above the abyss of woe on the arch of the rainbow; and that the Koran teaches that they must go over on the bridge el Sirat, whose blade is sharp as a scimitar; and even Christians speak of passing over a mythical Jordan. The early missionaries were told by the Hurons and Iroquois that the soul after death must cross a deep, rapid river on a bridge made of a slender and ill-poised tree; another tribe believed in crossing a river in a stone canoe, another in going over the stream on a bridge made of an enor mous serpent. The Indians of Chili, the Aztecs,

and the Esquimaux had similar legends. All these notions sprang up naturally. Among primitive people, before bridges were built, the chief difficulty a traveler encountered was in crossing a river, or a branch of the sea. They naturally thought that in the long journey from this world to the next, some similar difficulty would be found.

We saw in a previous chapter that a belief in ghosts is almost universal among primitive races. The negroes of Africa are tormented by the fear of ghosts, who are thought to return and haunt their homes.

The Nicaragua Indians, in 1528, gave their views concerning the departure of the soul, saying that, when one dies, the soul comes out of the mouth in a form like that of the living person. It is that which made them live, they said. A like phenomenon seems to have been accepted as a possibility by two of the most sharp-sighted observers, and ablest scientific men of our time. The late Dr. Edward Clarke told Dr. O. W. Holmes that once, as he sat by the side of a dying woman, he saw, at the moment of death, "a something rise from the body, which seemed like a departing presence." The conviction, he says, forced upon his mind, that something at that moment departed from the body, was stronger than words could express. Dr. Holmes adds that he heard the same experience told, almost in the same words, by a

lady whose testimony was eminently to be relied on. While watching her parent, she felt aware, at the moment of death, of a "something" which arose as if the spirit was perceived in the act of leaving the body. Dr. Edward Clarke and Dr. Holmes seem both to have attached a certain weight to these phenomena.

§ 2. Notions concerning it among the childlike races.

It is curious to find among the childlike races a dread of the ghosts of ancestors, as of beings disposed to do harm even to their surviving friends, a dread which has now wholly disappeared. There are thousands to-day, perhaps millions, in our own country, who firmly believe that they receive communications from what they call " the spirit land," and no fear is excited by such intercourse. But among primitive people there is a great dread of the malignant disposition of the departed spirits. Precautions are taken against their return. The Hottentots and Siamese break an opening through the wall of the house to carry out the dead, rebuilding it again as soon as the body is removed. The notion seems to be that the dead man can only return by the passage through which he departed. What a dreadful idea is that of the. vampire, described in one of the most striking passages of Byron.1

1 See the passage in The Giaour.

The notion of the childlike races concerning the hereafter is usually that of a continuation of this life in another world on much the same plane. The North American Indians, being hunters, believe in happy hunting-grounds. The Esquimaux in a place where the sun never sets, the land of a midnight sun, where there are plenty of walrus and fishes. The people of Kamschatka in a subterranean city, like the world above, only far better. The New Zealanders, like the Romans, placed their heroes among the stars. They thought that the Pleiades were the eyes of seven heroes killed in battle. The Peruvians believed in the resurrection of the body, and in two future worlds: an abode of hard work below the earth for the wicked, and a pleasant heaven above for the good. The Mexicans believed in many future worlds like this, and they dressed the dead man in his best clothes, put his passports in his hand, and buried with him his valuables. The Druids believed in three worlds, and in transmigration from one to the other in a world above this, in which happiness predominated; a world below, of misery; and this present state. This transmigration was to punish and reward, and also to purify the soul. In the present world, said they, good and evil are so exactly balanced that man has the utmost freedom, and is able to choose or reject either. The Welsh Triads tell us there are three objects of

metempsychosis, to collect into the soul the properties of all being, to acquire a knowledge of all things, and to get power to conquer evil. There are, also, they say, three kinds of knowledge: knowledge of the nature of each thing, of its cause, and its influence. There are three things which continually grow less: darkness, falsehood, and death. There are three which constantly increase light, life, and truth.

§ 3. Belief of the ancient Etruscans.

There was a wonderful nation, existing in a highly civilized condition in Italy before the rise of the Roman Republic. They excelled in arts and in arms, they had an artistic faculty like that of the Greeks, and an energy which long resisted and nearly crushed the growing power of the City of the Seven Hills. The safety of Rome was in the fact that the twelve cities of Etruria were only a confederacy and not a union. They carried on war independently of each other, and, therefore, might be defeated separately; whereas if they had been united, the Roman power could never have been developed. A half-Greek race, they were fond of decoration and drawing. Their faith in immortality shows itself in their tombs and inscriptions. Everything except the massive walls of some of their cities has disappeared. But the tombs of the Tarquins, of Lars Porsena, and