The conception of the world-tree is also found in the golden gem-bearing tree of the sky, where, according to Egyptian mythology, Nu̔ît had her abode. “She is goddess of the heavenly ocean, whose body is decked with stars. The pilgrim to the lower world eats of the fruit, and the goddess leaning from the tree pours out the water of life.” This was in the west on the way travelled by the dead. To the east there was another tree, with wide radiating branches bearing jewels, up which the strong morning sun, Horus, climbed to the zenith of heaven. It has been suggested that this “Sycamore of Emerald” was a mythological rendering of the beautiful green tints on the horizon at the rising and setting of the sun.[267] The tradition of a universe-tree is found also in China and Japan. The legends of the latter country speak of an enormous metal pine which grows in the north at the centre of the world.[268] In Chinese mythology seven miraculous trees once flourished on the Kuen Lün Mountains. One of them, which was of jade, bore fruit that conferred immortality; another, named Tong, grew on the highest peak, “hard by the closed gate of heaven.”[269] It is interesting to find somewhat similar traditions current in the New World. According to the cosmogony of the Sia Indians—a small diminished tribe inhabiting New Mexico—there was in each of the six regions of the world, North, South, East, West, Zenith, and Nadir, a mountain bearing a giant tree, in a spring at the foot of which dwelt one of the six “cloud rulers,” each attended by one of the six primal Sia priestesses, chosen by the arch-mother to intercede with the cloud rulers to send rain to the Sia. The six trees were specified as the spruce, pine, aspen, cedar, and two varieties of the oak.[270] The beautiful conception met with in some of the above traditions, by which the stars were compared at once to gems and to the fruits of a mighty tree, is frequently encountered in ancient literature. The Arabians represented the zodiac as a tree with twelve branches, of which the stars were the fruit, and a somewhat similar idea appears in the Apocalyptic tree of life, which “bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month.”[271] The Babylonian hero Gilgames, in his wanderings beyond the gates of ocean, came upon a forest, which To the forest of the trees of the gods in appearance was equal; Emeralds it carried as its fruit; The branch refuses not to support a canopy; Crystal they carried as shoots, Fruit they carry and to the sight it is glistening.[272]