t.

+65+. Possibly in some cases it is the traditional original home of the
tribe;[129] more often, it would seem, some local or astronomical fact
has given the suggestion of the place; one Egyptian view was that the
western desert (a wide mysterious region) was the abode of the departed;
it was a widespread belief that the dead went to where the sun
disappeared beneath the horizon.[130] Tribes living near the sea or a
river often place the other world beyond the sea or the river,[131] and
a ferryman is sometimes imagined who sets souls over the water.[132]
Mountains also are regarded as abodes of the dead.[133] It is not
unnatural that the abodes of departed souls should be placed in the sky,
whose height and brightness, with its crowd of luminous bodies, made it
an object of wonder and awe, and caused it to be regarded as the
dwelling place of the happy gods, with whom deserving men would
naturally be. Sometimes the expanse of the upper air was regarded as the
home of souls (as in Samoa), sometimes a heavenly body--the sun (in
India), or the moon (in the Bowditch Islands), or the stars.[134] The
schemes being vague, several of these conceptions may exist side by side
at the same place and time.

+66+. The occupations of the dead in these regions are held usually to
be the same as those of the living; no other view is possible in early
stages of social life. Generally all the apparatus of earthly life
(food, utensils, weapons) is placed on the grave or with the body, and
wives and slaves are slain to be the companions of the deceased.

+67+. 4. A more decided separation between the living and the dead is
made in the conception of the underground world as the abode of the
latter. It was, however, only at a late period that this conception was
carried far enough to make the separation effective. Among the Central
Australians there were folk-stories of early men who traveled under the
ground, but this is represented as merely an extraordinary way of
getting from one place to another on the surface of the earth. Some
North American tribes tell of an underground world inhabited by the ants
and by beings similar to man, but those who live up on the earth are
seen there only by accident, as when some hero dares the descent.[135]
The conception of a real subterranean or submarine hades is found,
however, among many savage and barbarous peoples, as the Samoans, the
inhabitants of New Guinea, the Zulus, the Navahos, the Eskimo