' And once more she inquired, 'What has he on his
sled?' To which he said, 'A beaver.' Then she knew that he could indeed
see." (T. Josephs.)
We can perceive by shreds and patches such as these the _all but_
loss of an early and grand mythology which has undergone the usual
transmutation into romantic and nursery legends. By great exertion we
might recover it, but the old Indians who retain its fragments are
passing away rapidly, and no subject attracts so little interest among
our _literati_. A few hundred dollars expended annually in each
State would result in the collection of all that is extant of this
folk-lore; and a hundred years hence some few will, perhaps, regret
that it was not done.
It may be observed that in the Edda the rainbow is the heavenly road
over which the gods pass. The rainbow is not the Milky Way, but it may
be observed that in this tale the two are curiously compared, or almost
identified. But according to Charles Francis Keary (_Mythology of the
Eddas_, London, 1882), "there is small hint in the Edda of the use
of the _rainbow_ as a path for souls, save where Helgi says to his
wife,--
"''Tis time for me to ride the ruddy road,
And on my horse to tread the path of flight,'"
which is more applicable to the Milky Way than the rainbow. "We owe,"
he says, "to the learned Adalbert Kohn some researches which have
traced the path of the Milky Way as a bridge of souls from its first
appearance in Eastern creeds to its later appearance in mediaeval
German tradition.
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