explain the same phenomenon. Both
to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast but deliberate journey
of the sun through the firmament was a strange circumstance which called
for explanation; but while the meagre intelligence of the barbarian
could only attain to the quaint conception of a man throwing a noose
over the sun's head, the rich imagination of the Indo-European created
the noble picture of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in
accordance with the resistless decree of fate.

Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar are the mental habits
of uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a
great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling
is familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise,
swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his back; but by and
by, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will grow
weary and sink under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed
by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demons
took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to make
ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the
bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon.
But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original
conception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a
boundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower plate which
covers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell which covers his back is
the sky; and the human race lives and moves and has its being inside of
the tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of Redskins
hold substantially the same theory of the universe. They regard the
tortoise as the symbol of the world, and address it as the mother of
mankind. Once, before the earth was made, the king of heaven quarrelled
with his wife, and gave her such a terrible kick that she fell down into
the sea. Fortunately a tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded
to raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the mother
of mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the
ground to catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too
far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea and
drowned all the human race save one man. [149] In Finnish mythology the
world is not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which th