pig. And when the tree saw the
white pig and the black pig, he chid the man and said, "You are
thankless. I was good to you. An evil will overtake you; you will die.
The devil will fall upon you, and you will die." So it has been with us
as it was with the man of Souh. An evil overtakes us or a spirit falls
upon us, and we die. If it had been as the tree said, we should not have
died.[98] Another story told by the Admiralty Islanders to account for
the melancholy truth of man's mortality runs thus. Kosi, the chief of
Moakareng, was in his house. He was hungry. He said to his two sons, "Go
and climb the breadfruit trees and bring the fruit, that we may eat them
together and not die." But they would not. So he went himself and
climbed the breadfruit tree. But the north-west wind blew a storm, it
blew and threw him down. He fell and his body died, but his ghost went
home. He went and sat in his house. He tied up his hair and he painted
his face with red ochre. Now his wife and his two sons had gone after
him into the wood. They went to fetch home the breadfruits. They came
and saw Kosi, and he was dead. The three returned home, and there they
saw the ghost of Kosi sitting in his house. They said, "You there! Who's
that dead at the foot of the breadfruit tree? Kosi, he is dead at the
foot of the breadfruit tree." Kosi, he said, "Here am I. I did not fall.
Perhaps somebody else fell down. I did not. Here I am." "You're a liar,"
said they. "I ain't," said he. "Come," said they, "we'll go and see."
They went. Kosi, he jumped into his body. He died. They buried him. If
his wife had behaved well, we should not die. Our body would die, but
our ghost would go about always in the old home.[99]

[Sidenote: Stories of the origin of death: the fatal bundle or the fatal
box.]

The Wemba of Northern Rhodesia relate how God in the beginning created a
man and a woman and gave them two bundles; in one of them was life and
in the other death. Most unfortunately the man chose "the little bundle
of death."[100] The Cherokee Indians of North America say that a number
of beings were engaged in the work of creation. The Sun was made first.
Now the creators intended that men should live for ever. But when the
Sun passed over them in the sky, he told the people that there was not
room enough for them all and that they had better die. At last the Sun's
own daughter, who was with the people on earth, was bitten by a snake
and died. Then the Sun rep