After death, according to their belief, the soul descended into a world below the surface of the earth. The Greeks called it the realm of Hades, from the name of its ruler, otherwise known as Pluto. The latter name signifies the wealthy, because sooner or later all the children of men and all their possessions come under his power. The meaning of Hades is unknown, as its derivation from _æidos_, unseen, is now generally doubted by the best Greek scholars. The entrance to this realm was supposed to be guarded by two dogs, the more famous of which, Cerberus in Greek, is in the Vedas spoken of by the same name, Carvara. The soul must pacify these dogs and pass them without injury if it would enjoy the delights that lay beyond. Within the gates stretched a broad desert through which flowed the river Acheron, which in later myths came to have various branches, the Styx, Lethe, Polyphegmon, etc. This was to be crossed in the boat of Charon, the silent ferryman, who spake no word but exacted of each ghost a toll. The dark river crossed, the spirit appeared before the judges, and by them its future fate was decided. An adverse decision condemned it to wander lonely in the darkness, but a favorable verdict authorized its entrance into the happy fields of Elysium. This joyous abode was in the far west, in that land beyond the shining waters and the purple sunset sea, where the orb of light goes to rest himself at night. Its light is eternal, its joys perennial, its happiness perfect. With little difference, this faith was shared by ancient Indians and ancient Norsemen. The latter often buried with the dead a canoe or boat, destined to convey the soul across the waves to the happy land beyond. Even the ancient Kelt of Cornwall or Brittany had this same myth of the Islands of the Blessed, lying somewhere far out in the Western Sea. What to the Greek was the Garden of the Hesperides with its fruit of golden quinces, was to the Kelt the Isle of Avalon, with its orchards of apples. Thither was conveyed the noble Arthur when slain on the field of Lyoness. He was borne away in a royal boat by the fairy women of the strand. There Ogier the Dane, worn by the wars of a hundred years, was carried by his divine godmother to be restored to youth and strength, and to return again to wield his battle-axe under the Oriflamme of France. Wherever we turn, whether in the most ancient chants of the Vedas, in the graceful forms of the Greek religious fancy, in the gaunt and weird imaginings of the Norse poets, or in the complex but brilliant pictures of mediæval romance, we find the same distinct plan of this journey of the soul.