creator who was mortal. "He exists no
longer. As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no longer exists;
he died." Chiefs who wish to claim high descent trace their pedigree to
Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced theirs to Zeus. The myths given by
Dr. Callaway are very contradictory.

(1) These legends have been carefully collected and published by Bishop
Callaway (Trubner & Co., 1868).

(2) Callaway, p. 9.

In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds, other and
perhaps even more puerile stories are current. "Some men say that they
were belched up by a cow;" others "that Unkulunkulu split them out of
a stone,"(1) which recalls the legend of Pyrrha and Deucalion. The myth
about the cow is still applied to great chiefs. "He was not born; he was
belched up by a cow." The myth of the stone origin corresponds to the
Homeric saying about men "born from the stone or the oak of the old
tale".(2)

(1) Without anticipating a later chapter, the resemblances of these
to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouche Leclercq (De Origine Generis
Humani), is very striking.

(2) Odyssey, xix. 103.

In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus, like
the Navajoes of New Mexico, and the Bushmen, believe in the subterranean
origin of man. There was a succession of emigrations from below of
different tribes of men, each having its own Unkulunkulu. All accounts
agree that Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, and he does not seem to
be identified with "the lord who plays in heaven"--a kind of fading
Zeus--when there is thunder. Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though
ancestral spirits are worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no
one can now trace his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man
and the creator. His "honour-giving name is lost in the lapse of years,
and the family rites have become obsolete."(1)

(1) See Zulu religion in The Making of Religion, pp. 225-229, where it
is argued that ghost worship has superseded a higher faith, of which
traces are discernible.

The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose
civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths)
occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in
which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on insects and
unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the
Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.

The original facts about re