could be seen around it; but the
Indians suppose that the medicine party are then holding converse
with the man in the moon." [41] Mr. Duncan was at another time led
to the ancestral village of a tribe of Indians, whose chief said to him:
"This is the place where our fore fathers lived, and they told us
something we want to tell you. The story is as follows: 'One night a
child of the chief class awoke and cried for water. Its cries were
very affecting--"Mother, give me to drink!" but the mother heeded
not. The moon was affected, and came down, entered the house, and
approached the child, saying, "Here is water from heaven: drink."
The child anxiously laid hold of the pot and drank the draught, and
was enticed to go away with the moon, its benefactor. They took an
underground passage till they got quite clear of the village, and then
ascended to heaven.' And," said the chief, "our forefathers tell us
that the figure we now see in the moon is that very child; and also
the little round basket which it had in its hand when it went to sleep
appears there." [42]

The aborigines of New Zealand have a suggestive version of this
superstition. It is quoted from D'Urville by De Rougemont in his
_Le Peuple Primitif_ (tom. ii. p. 245), and is as follows:--"Before
the moon gave light, a New Zealander named Rona went out in the
night to fetch some water from the well. But he stumbled and
unfortunately sprained his ankle, and was unable to return home. All
at once, as he cried out for very anguish, he beheld with fear and
horror that the moon, suddenly becoming visible, descended
towards him. He seized hold of a tree, and clung to it for safety; but
it gave way, and fell with Rona upon the moon; and he remains
there to this day." [43] Another account of Rona varies in that he
escapes falling into the well by seizing a tree, and both he and the
tree were caught up to the moon. The variation indicates that the
legend has a living root.

Here we terminate our somewhat wearisome wanderings about the
world and through the mazes of mythology in quest of the man in
the moon. As we do so, we are constrained to emphasize the striking
similarity between the Scandinavian myth of Jack and Jill, that
exquisite tradition of the British Columbian chief, and the New
Zealand story of Rona. When three traditions, among peoples so far
apart geographically, so essentially agree in one, the lessons to be
learned from comparative mythology ought not to b