Its
perennial glory, its comfortable warmth, its daily analogy to the life
of man, marked its abode as the pleasantest spot in the universe. It
matters not whether the eastern Algonkins pointed to the south, others
of their nation, with the Iroquois and Creeks, to the west, or many
tribes to the east, as the direction taken by the spirit; all these
myths but mean that its bourn is the home of the sun, which is perhaps
in the Orient whence he comes forth, in the Occident where he makes his
bed, or in the South whither he retires in the chilling winter. Where
the sun lives, they informed the earliest foreign visitors, were the
villages of the deceased, and the milky way which nightly spans the arch
of heaven, was, in their opinion, the road that led thither, and was
called the path of the souls (_le chemin des ames_).[244-1] To _hueyu
ku_, the mansion of the sun, said the Caribs, the soul passes when death
overtakes the body.[244-2] Our knowledge is scanty of the doctrines
taught by the Incas concerning the soul, but this much we do know, that
they looked to the sun, their recognized lord and protector, as he who
would care for them at death, and admit them to his palaces.
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