hs, and other animal stories gathered on
the Amazonas, by Professor Hartt and Mr. Herbert Smith, it may be said
that all or nearly all of them have their variants among the negroes of
the Southern plantations. This would constitute a very curious fact if
the matter were left where Professor Hartt left it when his monograph
was written. In that monograph[i_18] he says: "The myths I have placed on
record in this little paper have, without doubt, a wide currency on the
Amazonas, but I have found them only among the Indian population, and
they are all collected in the Lingua Geral. All my attempts to obtain
myths from the negroes on the Amazonas proved failures. Dr. Couto de
Magalhaes, who has recently followed me in these researches, has had the
same experience. The probability, therefore, seems to be that the myths
are indigenous, but I do not yet consider the case proven." Professor
Hartt lived to prove just the contrary; but, unfortunately, he did not
live to publish the result of his investigations. Mr. Orville A. Derby,
a friend of Professor Hartt, writes as follows from Rio de Janeiro:

DEAR SIR,--In reading the preface to Uncle Remus,[i_19] it
occurred to me that an observation made by my late friend
Professor Charles Fred Hartt would be of interest to you.

At the time of the publication of his Amazonian Tortoise Myths,
Professor Hartt was in doubt whether to regard the myths of the
Amazonian Indians as indigenous or introduced from Africa. To
this question he devoted a great deal of attention, making a
careful and, for a long time, fruitless search among the
Africans of this city for some one who could give undoubted
African myths. Finally he had the good fortune to find an
intelligent English-speaking Mina black, whose only knowledge of
Portuguese was a very few words which he had picked up during
the short time he had been in this country, a circumstance which
strongly confirms his statement that the myths related by him
were really brought from Africa. From this man Professor Hartt
obtained variants of all or nearly all of the best known
Brazilian _animal_ myths, and convinced himself that this class
is not native to this country. The spread of these myths among
the Amazonian Indians is readily explained by the intimate
association of the two races for over two hundred years, the
taking character of the myths, and the Indian's