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On the Translation of Myths Between the Old And: Japan

Jacks, in his report to the Queensland Government, published March or April of 1880, reports no paying gold in Yorke's peninsula. One hundred miles from Port Darwin and twenty-six miles from the Adelaide River a new rush occurred in July 1880: nuggets from 70 to 80 oz. of common occurrence; one found weighed 187 oz. dered as being Japan) with Corea, and Wák Wák with Japan; but this does not agree with El Edrisi's account of the people being black, unclothed, and living on fish, shell, and tortoises (turtles), without gold, commerce, ships, or beasts of burden. Elsewhere El Edrisi says the women are entirely naked, and only wear combs of ivory ornamented with mother of pearl.

Lane thinks the Arabs applied the name of Wák Wák to all the islands with which they were acquainted on the east and south-east of Borneo. Es Serafee, beside the details given in a previous note, also says, "From one of these islands of Wák Wák there issueth a great torrent like pitch, which floweth into the sea, and the fish are burnt thereby, and float upon the water." And Hasan, in the story quoted above, has, in order to reach the last of the seven islands of Wák Wák, to pass over the third island, the land of the Jinn, "where by reason of the vehemence of the cries of the Jánn, and the rising of the flames about, of the sparks and the smoke from their mouths, and the harsh sounds from their throats, and their insolence, they will obstruct the way before us," &c. &c. I think that in each of these latter instances, the volcanic islands of Java, and other of the Sunda islands are indicated.

The information in our possession is as yet too meagre to permit of our indulging in any profitable consideration of the sources from which originated those nations which peopled America during the very early pre-traditional ages, of which geological evidence is accumulating daily. In fact, the theories on this point have advanced so little beyond the limits of speculation that I feel it unnecessary to do more than quote one of them, as summarized in the ensuing extract. "Professor Flowers, in remarking upon recent palæontological investigations, which prove that an immense number of forms of terrestrial animals that were formerly supposed to be peculiar to the Old World are abundant in OLD AND NEW WORLD MYTHS. the New; and that many, such as the horse, rhinoceros, and the camel, are more numerous in species and varieties in the latter, infers that the means of land communication must have been very different to what it is now, and that it is quite as likely that Asiatic man may have been derived from America as the reverse, or both may have had their source in a common centre, in some region of the earth now covered with sea."* The most commonly accepted theory with regard to the origin of those who have peopled the American continent, within the limits of tradition, is that they are of Asiatic descent, and that the migration has been effected in comparatively recent times by way of Behring Straits, and supplemented by chance passages from Southern Asia by way of the Polynesian islands, or from the north of Africa, across the Atlantic. There are, however, some who elaborate Professor Flowers' suggestion, and contend, in opposition to the more generally received opinion, that the peopling of the present countries of the Old World has in fact been effected from the New.