ars they
cinders")--consisted for them merely of the flying cinders from the
burning stars.

The sun, they stated, was made up entirely of dead _barih_, or
medicine-men, who rose daily with red-hot irons before their faces. The
_barihs_ prowled about the earth at night, and went to the east in the
morning on their return to the sun. The hot irons held by the _barihs_
were merely held in order to warm the people on earth. At sunset the orb
of day "came down to the water" beyond the horizon, and from there
marched back to the east. The Bororos maintained that the heavy and
regular footsteps of the sun walking across the earth at night could be
heard plainly.

[Illustration: Bororo Girls.]

[Illustration: Bororo Girls (side view).]

The moon, which was masculine to the Bororos, was the brother of the
sun, and was similarly the home of _barihs_ of minor importance.

The legends of the Bororos were generally long and somewhat confused.
They were the outcome of extremely imaginative and extraordinarily
retentive minds. Their imagination frequently ran away with them, so that
it was not always easy to transcribe the legends so as to render them
intelligible to the average reader, unaccustomed to the peculiar way of
thinking and reasoning of savages. Yet there was generally a certain
amount of humorous _vraisemblance_ in their most impossible stories.
Their morals, it should be remembered, were not quite the same as ours.
There were frequently interminable descriptive details which one could on
no account reproduce in print, and without them much of the point of the
legends would be lost. So that, with the confusion and disorder of ideas
of the Bororos, their peculiar ways of expression, and the mutilation
necessary so as not to shock the public, the legends were hardly worth
reproducing. Still, I shall give here one or two of the more interesting
legends, which can be reproduced almost in their entirety.

"The sun and moon (two brothers, according to the Bororos) while hunting
together began to play with arrows with blunt heads, such as those used
by Bororos for catching birds alive. They hit each other in fun, but at
last the sun shot one arrow with too much force and the moon died from
the effects of the wound. The sun, unconcerned, left his dying brother
and continued hunting; but afterwards returned with medicinal leaves
which he placed on the wound of the moon. According to Bororo fashion,
he even covered the dying