ver have died.[83] The Arawaks of British Guiana relate that once upon
a time the Creator came down to earth to see how his creature man was
getting on. But men were so wicked that they tried to kill him so he
deprived them of eternal life and bestowed it on the animals which renew
their skin, such as serpents, lizards, and beetles.[84] A somewhat
different version of the story is told by the Tamanachiers, an Indian
tribe of the Orinoco. They say that after residing among them for some
time the Creator took boat to cross to the other side of the great salt
water from which he had come. Just as he was shoving off from the shore,
he called out to them in a changed voice, "You will change your skins,"
by which he meant to say, "You will renew your youth like the serpents
and the beetles." But unfortunately an old woman, hearing these words,
cried out "Oh!" in a tone of scepticism, if not of sarcasm, which so
annoyed the Creator that he changed his tune at once and said testily,
"Ye shall die." That is why we are all mortal.[85]

[Sidenote: Melanesian story of the old woman who renewed her youth by
casting her skin.]

The natives of the Banks' Islands and the New Hebrides believe that
there was a time in the beginning of things when men never died but cast
their skins like snakes and crabs and so renewed their youth. But the
unhappy change to mortality came about at last, as it so often does in
these stories, through an old woman. Having grown old, this dame went to
a stream to change her skin, and change it she did, for she stripped off
her wizened old hide, cast it upon the waters, and watched it floating
down stream till it caught on a stick. Then she went home a buxom young
woman. But the child whom she had left at home did not know her and set
up such a prodigious squalling that to quiet it the woman went straight
back to the river, fished out her cast-off old skin, and put it on
again. From that day to this people have ceased to cast their skins and
to live for ever.[86] The same legend of the origin of death has been
recorded in the Shortlands Islands[87] and among the Kai of German New
Guinea.[88] It is also told with some variations by the natives of the
Admiralty Islands. They say that once on a time there was an old woman
and she was frail. She had two sons, and they went a-fishing, and she
herself went to bathe. She stripped off her wrinkled old skin and came
forth as young as she had been long ago. Her sons cam