ented him and said that men might live always;
and he bade them take a box and go fetch his daughter's spirit in the
box and bring it to her body, that she might live. But he charged them
straitly not to open the box until they arrived at the dead body.
However, moved by curiosity, they unhappily opened the box too soon;
away flew the spirit, and all men have died ever since.[101] Some of the
North American Indians informed the early Jesuit missionaries that a
certain man had received the gift of immortality in a small packet from
a famous magician named Messou, who repaired the world after it had been
seriously damaged by a great flood. In bestowing on the man this
valuable gift the magician strictly enjoined him on no account to open
the packet. The man obeyed, and so long as the packet was unopened he
remained immortal. But his wife was both curious and incredulous; she
opened the packet to see what was in it, the precious contents flew
away, and mankind has been subject to death ever since.[102]

[Sidenote: Baganda story how death came into the world through the
forgetfulness and imprudence of a woman.]

As these American Indians tell how death came through the curiosity and
incredulity of one woman, the Baganda of Central Africa relate how it
came through the forgetfulness and imprudence of another. According to
the Baganda the first man who came to earth in Uganda was named Kintu.
He brought with him one cow and lived on its milk, for he had no other
food. But in time a woman named Nambi, a daughter of Gulu, the king of
heaven, came down to earth with her brother or sister, and seeing Kintu
she fell in love with him and wished to have him for her husband. But
her proud father doubted whether Kintu was worthy of his daughter's
hand, and accordingly he insisted on testing his future son-in-law
before he would consent to the marriage. So he carried off Kintu's cow
and put it among his own herds in heaven. When Kintu found that the cow
was stolen, he was in a great rage, but hunger getting the better of
anger, he made shift to live by peeling the bark of trees and gathering
herbs and leaves, which he cooked and ate. In time his future wife Nambi
happened to spy the stolen cow among her father's herds and she told
Kintu, who came to heaven to seek and recover the lost animal. His
future father-in-law Gulu, Lord of Heaven, obliged him to submit to many
tests designed to prove his fitness for marriage with the daughter o