m
Labrador to the Straits of Magellan. [54] The Hindus churned milk by
a similar process; [55] and in order to explain the thunder-storm, a
Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their
opponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churning
the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immortality. They took Mount
Mandara for a churning-stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha
round it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the
Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head." [56]
In this myth the churning-stick, with its flying serpent-cords, is
the lightning, and the armrita, or drink of immortality, is simply the
rain-water, which in Aryan folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues
as the lightning. "In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which
restores the dead earth, a water brought by a bird from the depths of a
gloomy cave." [57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves
to drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the
charmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to human shape
the victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which
mediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce de
Leon traversed the wilds of Florida. [58]

"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and
prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He got
a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he cut and
pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked
it round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity.
Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst
into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark and
roasted them."--Reade, Never too Late to Mend, chap. xxxviii.

The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the peaked
mountain Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and devils took for their
churning-stick. The word means "a churning-stick," and it appears also,
with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the fire-drill, pramantha.
Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha, is etymologically
identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole
fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons.
This sublime personage was originally nothing but the celestial drill
which churns fire out of the clouds; but the