The transfer of souls through death from one kind of life to another does not necessarily involve any moral change. The relations of earth are resumed in the new scene. The ancient Celts who placed letters to their friends on the pyre of a dead relative, or even expected to receive in the next world the repayment of loans in this, conceived existence hereafter on the same plane as the present, like the modern Chinaman who celebrates the wedding of his spirit-son with the spirit-daughter of a suitable friend, and thus brings peace to a tormented house. The spirit-land of Ibo on the lower Niger had its rivers and forests, its hills, and towns, and roads, below the ground like those above, only more gloomy. In Tuonela, the land of the dead, Finnic imagination pictured rivers of black water, {232} with boisterous waterfalls and dangerous whirlpools, forests full of wild beasts, and fields of grain which provided the death-worm with his teeth; but it is still homely enough for Wainamoinen to find the daughter of its ruler, Tuoni, god of death, busy with her washing. The dead of the Mordvinians, a group of Ural-Altaic origin in the heart of Russia, are believed to marry and beget children as on earth. Such conceptions naturally resulted in a continuity of occupation, rank, and service. The Spanish historian, Herrera, relates that in Mexico "every great man had a priest or chaplain to perform the ceremonies of his house, and when he died the chaplain was called to serve him in the same manner, and so were his master of the household, his cup-bearer, his dwarf, the deformed people he kept, and the brothers that had served him, for they looked upon it as a piece of grandeur to be served by them, and said they were going to keep house in the other world." Yet in Mexico, as will be seen immediately, the differentiation of the future lot had already begun.