ready for the weary god where they would be most welcome, at the end of his day’s journey. [Sidenote: Staying the sun by means of a net or string. Staying the sun by putting a stone or a clod in the fork of a tree.] As some people think they can light up the sun or speed him on his way, so others fancy they can retard or stop him. In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two ruined towers on opposite hills. Iron hooks are clamped into their walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun.​[1116] On a small hill in Fiji grew a patch of reeds, and travellers who feared to be belated used to tie the tops of a handful of reeds together to prevent the sun from going down.​[1117] As to this my late friend the Rev. Lorimer Fison wrote to me: “I have often seen the reeds tied together to keep the sun from going down. The place is on a hill in Lakomba, one of the eastern islands of the Fijian group. It is on the side—not on the top—of the hill. The reeds grow on the right side of the path. I asked an old man the meaning of the practice, and he said, ‘We used to think the sun would see us, and know we wanted him not to go down till we got past on our way home again.’”​[1118] But perhaps the original intention was to entangle the sun in the reeds, just as the Peruvians try to catch him in the net. Stories of men who have caught the sun in a noose are widely spread.​[1119] When the sun is going southward in the autumn, and sinking lower and lower in the Arctic sky, the Esquimaux of Iglulik play the game of cat’s cradle in order to catch him in the meshes of the string and so prevent his {p317} disappearance. On the contrary, when the sun is moving northward in the spring, they play the game of cup-and-ball to hasten his return.​[1120] Means like those which the Esquimaux take to stop the departing sun are adopted by the Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast to catch a runaway slave. They take two sticks, unite them by a string, and then wind the string round one of them, while at the same time they pronounce the name of the fugitive. When the string is quite wound about the stick, the runaway will be bound fast and unable to stir.​[1121] In New Guinea, when a Motu man is hunting or travelling late in the afternoon and fears to be overtaken by darkness, he will sometimes take a piece of twine, loop it, and look through the loop at the sun. Then he pulls the loop into a knot and says, “Wait until we get home, and we will give you the fat of a pig.” After that he passes the string to the man behind him, and then it is thrown away. In a similar case a Motumotu man of New Guinea says, “Sun, do not be in a hurry; just wait until I get to the end.” And the sun waits. The Motumotu do not like to eat in the dark; so if the food is not yet ready, and the sun is sinking, they say, “Sun, stop; my food is not ready, and I want to eat by you.”​[1122] Here the looking at the sinking sun through a loop and