16 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou. V-

Therefore the two adulterous serpents of our present legend can be
considered as one. —

A detail which the reader may have noticed in that legend is that the
injured husband sets ajar by means of splinters the mouth and eyes of
the decapitated snakes. As this circumstance occurs twice in the course
of the same story, it is evidently mentioned on purpose. What that pur-
pose may be is more than I can say. Is it revengeful irony at the now
helpless condition of the monster, or allegorical of its malice as the source
of all evil? An important analogy might be found between this point of
the myth and the style of drawing serpent heads common to the semi-
civilized nations of Mexico and Peru. On the codices, these heads are
generally remarkable for their mouth kept yawning by means of what

Serpent Heads from the Codices.

looks more like extraneous adjuncts than natural teeth. I herewith
figure two examples in confirmation of my remark.

Another point of the native theogony perhaps worth noticing is the
supposed efficacy of the act of jumping across a subject. Thus the Child
of our tradition jumps across the corpse of his metempsychosed father-in-
law, who thereby recovers life. So he does later on, and with similar
results, with regard to the bones of his brother. This act must have had
to the original Indian mind a hidden meaning ; for we find that the
Kutchin or Loucheux of the Mackenzie River, in common with the
Hare Indians, have a periodic festival, not unlike the Phaset of the
Hebrews, on the occasion of which the death chant is sung, thus: ‘‘O
mouse with the pointed nose}, hasten to jump twice across the face of
the earth?!” One feels inclined to hazard as a possible explanation the
Egyptian cross, the key of life and health and its probable equivalent on
the ancient tau-shaped coppers of the North Pacific tribes, both of which
were perhaps nothing else than the symbol of the daily course of the life-
giving sun across the heavens. If this be the case, our Indians have long
lost all idea of the true signification of this mysterious act.

Might not the flight and vicissitudes of the two Carrier heroes pursued

1The French musaratgne. 7 Traditions tndtennes, etc., pp. 62 et 186.