This danger lurking in the west is known to mean death, which no one, even the mightiest, escapes. This magician, as we learn, also killed the father of Nokomis. Now she sends her son forth to avenge the father (Horus). Through the symbols attributed to the magician it may easily be recognized what he symbolizes. Snake and water belong to the mother, the snake as a symbol of the repressed longing for the mother, or, in other words, as a symbol of resistance, encircles protectingly and defensively the maternal rock, inhabits the cave, winds itself upwards around the mother tree and guards the precious hoard, the “mysterious” treasure. The black Stygian water is, like the black, muddy spring of Dhulqarnein, the place where the sun dies and enters into rebirth, the maternal sea of death and night. On his journey thither Hiawatha takes with him the magic oil of Mishe-Nahma, which helps his boat through the waters of death. (Also a sort of charm for immortality, like the dragon’s blood for Siegfried, etc.) First, Hiawatha slays the great serpent. Of the “night journey in the sea” over the Stygian waters it is written: “All night long he sailed upon it, Sailed upon that sluggish water, Covered with its mould of ages, Black with rotting water-rushes, Rank with flags, and leaves of lilies, Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, Lighted by the shimmering moonlight And by will-o’-the-wisps illumined, Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled, In their weary night encampments.” The description plainly shows the character of a water of death. The contents of the water point to an already mentioned motive, that of encoiling and devouring. It is said in the “Key to Dreams of Jagaddeva”:[687] “Whoever in dreams surrounds his body with bast, creepers or ropes, with snake-skins, threads, or tissues, dies.” I refer to the preceding arguments in regard to this. Having come into the west land, the hero challenges the magician to battle. A terrible struggle begins. Hiawatha is powerless, because Megissogwon is invulnerable. At evening Hiawatha retires wounded, despairing for a while, in order to rest: “Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, From whose branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead-man’s Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow.”