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The Earth's Story: I
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER
THE EARTH'S STORY
As Narrated Quite Simply for
Young Readers
BY FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER
Volume One
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Volume Two
THE FIRST DAYS OF KNOWLEDGE
Volume Three
THE FIRST DAYS OF HISTORY
Each volume illustrated and
with a frontispiece in color.
To.
AFTER MOTHER NATURE HAD SENT HEAT AWAY TO MELT UP SOME
OTHER WORLDS, SHE CALLED FOR HIS BROTHER, COLD, AND COL1>
CAME RUSHING UP, HIS GREAT WHITE WINGS GLITTERING WITH FROST.
The Earth's Story: I
THE FIRST DAYS
OF MAN
AS NARRATED QUITE SIMPLY
FOR YOUNG READERS
BY
FREDERIC ARNOLD RUMMER
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN. II
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
THE Author desires to express his thanks to
Dr. William K. Gregory, of the American Mu-
seum of Natural History, as well as to the other
Museum authorities, for their courtesy and as-
sistance in the matter of illustrations, and in
the preparation of the text. The book does not
pretend, of course, to be a strictly scientific work.
Many liberties have been taken, in order to render
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the subject interesting * to the youthful mind.
Man's earlv inventions did not come about so
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simply as is pictured in the various chapters.
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But the development* of 'civilisation is a romance,
and only by so treating it can we hope to enlist
the interest of the young reader. It is sufficient
that the story rests upon a foundation of fact.
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PREFACE FOR PARENTS
EVERY child, between the ages of five and fif-
teen, seeks by constant questioning to grasp the
fundamental facts upon which our whole fabric
of present-day knowledge is based. These facts,
painfully gathered by the human race during its
many centuries of development, must of neces-
sity be absorbed by the child within the short
space of some ten or twelve years. It is a pro-
digious task, and one in which the growing mind
should be afforded every possible assistance.
Two courses are usually adopted by parents ; one,
to dismiss the child's questions with the stock
phrase, "You are not old enough to understand,"
the other, to place in his hands some so-called
book of knowledge, containing, it is true, a great
mass of information which the child should pos-
sess, but usually so badly presented, so jumbled
[vii]
PREFACE FOR PARENTS
together, that no one fact has any bearing on
another, and thus the child is left to turn from
'Why the ocean is salt" to "What is a lightning
rod?" without the least understanding of the
principles and laws which underly these and all
other facts, and link them together in a com-
posite whole.
The writer has followed, with his own children,
a method of presenting the steps in the gradual
development of man which has produced most
gratifying results. Instead of treating each
fact, each laboriously accumulated bit of human
knowledge, as a mere isolated patch in a crazy-
quilt of information, he has attempted to arrange
them in logical sequence, to form an interesting
pattern, so that as the child's fund of knowledge
increases, he feels a deeper and deeper interest
in fitting each newly acquired fact into its proper
place in his mental picture of things.
The result is that the child is constantly build-
ing a structure which he understands. His mass
of accumulated knowledge is not heaped together
hap-hazard, like a pile of blocks, but each occu-
pies its proper and logical place in a slowly de-
[viii]
PREFACE FOR PARENTS
veloping whole. He derives pleasure from what
would otherwise be hard work, just as he would
derive pleasure from fitting together the pieces
of a puzzle picture; he finds himself progressing
toward some understandable end, and without
knowing it, he has not only gathered his facts,
and catalogued them, but he has begun to think
about them, and their relation to each other, in
short, he has begun the process of logical thought,
which is the first and greatest step in all edu-
cation.
In this process of storing away in his brain the
accumulated knowledge of the ages, the child's
mind passes, with inconceivable rapidity, along
the same route that the composite minds of his
ancestors travelled, during their centuries of de-
velopment. The impulse that causes him to
want to hunt, to fish, to build brush huts, to camp
out in the woods, to use his hands as well as his
brain, is an inheritance from the past, when his
primitive ancestors did these things. He should
be helped to trace the route they followed with
intelligence and understanding, he should be en-
couraged to know the woods and all the great
[ix]
PREFACE FOR PARENTS
world of out of doors, to make and use the primi-
tive weapons, utensils, toys, his ancestors made
and used, to come into closer contact with the
fundamental laws of nature, and thus to lay a
groundwork for wholesome and practical think-
ing which cannot be gained in the classroom, or
the city streets.
As has been said, the writer has tested the
methods outlined above. The chapters in "The
Earth's Story" are merely the things he has
told his own children. It is of interest to note
that one of these, a boy of seven, on first
going to school, easily outstripped in a single
month a dozen or more children who had been at
school almost a year, and was able to enter a
grade a full year ahead of them. The child in
question is not in the least precocious, but having
understood the knowledge he has gained, he is
able to make use of it, he has a definite mental
perspective, a sure grasp on things, which makes
study of any kind easy for him, and progression
correspondingly rapid.
Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the
fact that methods of thinking are more import-
PREFACE FOR PARENTS
ant, than the particular things we think about.
Right thinking is the cornerstone of all mental
development. In the writer's opinion it is the
great lack in modern education.
FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER.
Catonsville, Maryland.
[xi]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I How MOTHER NATURE MADE THE
EARTH READY FOR MAN . . . 19
II THE FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN THE MUD 29
III THE APE THAT WALKED LIKE A MAN 40
IV THE HUNGRY APE AND THE BUNCH OF
WILD FRUIT .... .51
V THE CAVE, AND THE FISH ... 63
VI ADH'S FIRST FIGHT .... 76
VII HA MAKES A NEW SPEAR ... 87
VIII MA-RA FINDS A NEW KIND OF FOOD,
AND A COAT OF FUR .... 103
IX THE COMING OF FIRE . . . .117
X THE FIRST BOAT 133
XI TOR-AD THE POTTER .... 148
XII How RA-NA SAVED His PEOPLE . . 162
XIII THE FIRST Bow AND ARROW . . . 173
XIV KA-MA THE TRAVELLER . . . .182
XV THE SEA PEOPLE 199
XVI MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE ... 209
[. .0=j
Xlll]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XVII THE CONQUERORS 225
XVIII THE ISLAND MEN 245
XIX THE FIRST SEA FIGHT .... 259
XX THE SEA ROVERS 276
XXI THE END OF THE STONE AGE 285
[xiv]
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLD CAME RUSHING UP, His GREAT WHITE
WINGS GUTTERING WITH FROST . Frontispiece
PAGE
BEFORE MAN
THE FIRST THINKER
THE WOODEN SPEAR
THE CAVE MAN'S FIGHT WITH A BEAR
THE HOME OF EARLY MAN
THE FIGHT WITH A MAMMOTH
THE BEGINNING OF THE STONE AGE .
TYPES OF WEAPONS USED BY EARLY MAN
THE BEAR, SKIN
THE FIRST FIRE
THE FIRST COOK
THE FIRST VOYAGE
A DUG-OUT CANOE OF EARLY MAN .
THE FIRST ARTIST
THE FIRST POTTER
THE SACRED FIRE
[XV]
37
57
73
79
83
91
95
99
111
119
137
137
155
167
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Bows AND ARROWS AND SLINGS .... 177
EARLY STONE WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS . 195
EARLY METHODS OF BREAD AND FIRE MAKING 231
THE FIRST Music 267
THE FIRST ARMOUR . ... . . .271
STONEHENGE ....... 287
[xvi]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
THE FIRST DAYS
OF MAN
CHAPTER I
HOW MOTHER NATURE MADE THE EARTH
READY FOR MAN
IN the beginning, millions of years ago, before
there were any men, or animals, or trees, or
flowers, the Earth was just a great round ball of
fire, bright and dazzling, like the Sun.
Instead of being solid, as it is now, it was a
huge cloud of white-hot gases, whirling through
space.
We all know how solids can be turned into
liquids, and liquids into gases, by Heat, for we
have only to heat a solid piece of ice to turn it
into a liquid, water, and if we keep on heating the
water, it will turn into a gas, which we call steam.
It was the same way with all the solid things on
[19]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the Earth; Heat had turned them all to gases,
like steam.
Then God called Mother Nature to Him and
told her to get the Earth ready for Man to live on.
So Mother Nature sent Heat away to melt
up some other worlds, and called for his brother,
Cold. And Cold came rushing up, his great
white wings glittering with frost.
"What can I do for you, Mother Nature?"
he asked.
"Blow on the Earth with all your might,
Cold," said Mother Nature, "and get it ready for
Man to live on." Then she flew away, and as
she went she took a piece of the Earth-cloud and
rolled it into a ball, and set it spinning in space
about the Earth, so that it might cool down later
and be the Moon.
When Mother Nature had gone, Cold, who
was the spirit of the great outer darkness in
which the Sun and Stars move, hovered about
the Earth and blew on it with all his might, and
as his icy breath swept over the fiery Earth, the
hot gases began to get cooler and cooler, and at
last they turned back to liquids again. And
[20]
MOTHER NATURE
after that, they got cooler still and began to turn
to solids, just as hot melted taffy gets hard and
solid when it cools.
It took Cold a very long time to cool the Earth,
millions of years, but he did not mind, for he had
nothing else to do. So he blew and blew, and
after a while a hard solid crust began to form all
over the Earth, very rough and uneven, with
high hills and mountains sticking up here and
there, and between them great wide valleys and
plains, all of solid rock.
When Mother Nature came back to look at
the Earth, Cold asked her how she liked it.
'You have done very well, Cold," she said,
"but it isn't fit for Man to live on yet, for it is too
hot, and there isn't any water. Blow some more,
and make Rain."
So Cold blew again, on the great white clouds
of steam that came rolling up from the hot
Earth, and his icy breath cooled the steam and
turned it into Rain, just as the steam from a tea-
kettle will turn to little drops of water if you
cool it suddenly. And the Rain fell back on the
Earth, year after year, until at last it filled up
[21]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the great wide plains and valleys between the
hills and turned them into rivers, and lakes and
oceans. But they were boiling hot.
"How do you like it now, Mother Nature?"
asked Cold.
"It still isn't fit for anything to live on," said
Mother Nature. 'You must cool it some more.
And tell Rain to make some earth for things to
grow in. They can't grow in solid rock."
So Cold blew again, harder than ever, and as
the cool Rain fell he said:
"Rain, will you please make some earth for
things to grow in?"
"Very well," said Rain. "I will."
So Rain fell for days and months and years on
the hot rocks, and cracked and softened them,
and each little raindrop as it rushed down the
sides of the mountains, carried a bit of soft,
crumbling rock down into the valleys, and after
a very long time, all these bits of rock-dust which
Rain had washed down from the hills formed
great wide beds of mud covering the rocky sur-
face of the plains many feet deep.
At the same time that Rain was washing the
[22]
MOTHER NATURE
soft rock down into the valleys to form mud, he
also carried down many bits of harder rock, yel-
low and white, and other colours, like glass.
These rocks would not form mud, because they
were too hard, but instead they became smooth
round pebbles of all sizes, with millions of tiny
bits, called sand, and the rivers carried them
down to the ocean, and made beautiful clean
beaches, as you can see whenever you go to the
seashore. And Rain washed many other things
out of the rocks and carried them down into the
ocean, such as salt. There are great beds of
rock-salt all over the Earth, and Rain melted
them, and washed the salt into the ocean, and that
is why the ocean is salt.
When Mother Nature, who was very busy,
came to look at the Earth she smiled, because it
pleased her.
"You have done very well, Cold and Rain,"
she said. "All the rivers and lakes and oceans
are full of nice warm water, and all the valleys
and plains are covered with soft warm mud,
ready for things to grow in. I think I had better
speak to the Sun."
[23]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
So Mother Nature said to the Sun:
"Sun, the Earth is ready for you now. Please
make something grow." Then she went away to
look after some other worlds she was fixing up.
The Sun looked down at the Earth and smiled
as he saw the nice rich beds of mud, and the great
wide Ocean.
"Are you ready, Ocean?" he asked.
'Yes," said the Ocean. "I am warm and salt
and full of Rain."
"Good. We shall need plenty of Rain," said
the Sun. Then he turned to the Air.
"Are you moist and warm, Air?" he asked.
"Yes," said the Air. "I am very moist and
warm.'
"Good," said the Sun. Then he turned to the
beds of mud.
"Mud," he said, "you are ugly and black, but
you are also full of nice rich chemicals and all
sorts of substances we need to make things grow.
With the help of Air, and Rain, I am going to
cover you with a beautiful carpet of green, so
that you will not be ugly any longer."
So the Sun turned his blazing rays on the soft
[24]
MOTHER NATURE
mud and warmed it, and then a wonderful thing
happened. Tiny living things, like plants,
formed out of the chemicals in the Mud and the
Water, and the Air, began to spring up, just as
God had long ago planned. They were very
small and weak at first, but after a while they
grew stronger and stronger, until they had
spread all over the Earth, wherever there was
mud or dirt for them to grow in. And later on,
because the Air was so moist and warm, the way
it is in the tropics, and because the Sun was so
hot, and there was plenty of Rain, the plants on
the Earth grew to be very large and strong.
There were ferns, like the little ones we see in
flower-pots, as big as trees, and all sorts of tall,
rank grasses, and vines, even at the North and
South Poles, for in those days, before the Earth
had cooled down the way it has now, the Poles
were warm, too.
For hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
years these great ferns and other plants grew,
and died, and fell back into the mud, and as they
rotted they made more earth, for other plants to
grow in, so that the earth-covering on top of the
[25]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
rocks grew thicker and thicker. In some places
the leaves and trunks of these fern-trees got
mashed down on each other in thick layers, and
became harder and harder, until they turned to
coal. Often, in coal mines, the miners will break
open a lump of coal and find printed in its sur-
face the exact pattern of the leaf of one of these
great fern-trees, just as it fell, millions of
years ago.
While all this was going on, Mother Nature,
having a little time to spare, came back to take a
look at the Earth. It was one of the smallest
worlds she had to look after, so she could not give
it all her time.
"It is doing very nicely indeed," she said to the
Sun. "In eight or ten million years it may be
ready for Man. But we must have some fish and
other things first. Won't you please attend to it
for me, Sun? I am very busy just now looking
after some new-born stars in the Milky Way."
"Certainly," said the Sun. "I will attend to it
at once." So he turned to the Ocean.
"Ocean," he said, "wouldn't you like to have
some fish swimming about in you?"
[26]
MOTHER NATURE
"Indeed I should," said the Ocean. "I am
very big, and I have plenty of room for all the
fish you can make."
"Good," said the Sun. "Do you see those tiny
spongy growths along the edge of the mud-
those funny little things like jelly-fish. I have
noticed that some of them haven't quite made up
their minds yet whether to be plants, or fish. They
have begun to wriggle and squirm about in the
mud, and a plant, you know, is supposed to take
root and stay in one place. Don't you think we
ought to help them to make up their minds?"
"Yes," said the Ocean. "What do you want
me to do?"
'Well, suppose you gently wash them loose
from the shore, and let them drift for a while in
your nice warm salt water. Maybe they will get
to like it."
"I'll try it," said the Ocean.
So he did, and after a time the tiny creatures
got to like the water so much that they lived in it
all the time, instead of just squirming about in
the mud. And as thousands of years went by,
some of them grew little shell-houses to live in,
[27]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
and some of them fastened themselves to rocks,
like oysters, and waited for food to drift right
into their mouths, but others grew fins and tails,
so that they could swim about in search of some-
thing to eat. It took a very long time of course,
but after a while, as they grew and grew, and
changed and changed, the Ocean came to be full
of all sorts of fish, large and small. And the
Ocean was very proud of them.
[28]
CHAPTER II
THE FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN THE MUD
WHEN Mother Nature came back to take a
look at things she was delighted to see how well
they were going.
"The trees and plants and grass are doing
nicely," she said, "and so are the fish. Now we
must get some animals on land, and you, Ocean,
must attend to it for me."
"What can I do?" the Ocean asked. "I
haven't any animals to put on the land."
"Then you must put some fish there, and I will
see that they are turned into animals."
"But fish can't live on the land," said the
Ocean. 'They haven't any lungs to breathe air
with. They can only breathe in the water."
"I know that," said Mother Nature, smiling.
'You just do as I tell you, and leave the rest
to me."
'What do you want me to do?" asked the
Ocean.
[29]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
"Tell the Wind to blow a great storm, and
wash some of your fish up into the salt marshes.
And after that, have your waves build a wall
of sand along the edge of the marshes, so that the
fish and the water you have washed in cannot get
out again."
"I will do it," said the Ocean, "but I do not
see any sense in it."
"You will, when I have finished," Mother
Nature said.
So the Ocean spoke to the Wind, and told him
to blow his hardest, and the Wind howled and
shrieked with joy and drove the waves before
him, and they danced and rolled up into the great
wide marshes and carried thousands and thou-
sands of fish with them. Then other waves
came, carrying sand, and with the sand they built
a wall all along the edge of the marshes, so that
the water in the marshes could not get out again,
but stayed there, spread out like a great shallow
inland sea.
Then Mother Nature said to the Sun:
"Sun, dry up the marshes, and see what
happens."
[30]
FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN MUD
So the Sun blazed down on the marshes and
began to dry them up. It took him thousands of
years to do it, for they were very large, but he
did not mind that, for he had nothing to do
but shine.
The fish that had been carried into the marshes
had a great time, at first, swimming about in the
shallow water quite as much at home as they had
been in the Ocean. But after a while, as the
marshes began to dry up, some of the fish got
caught in the mud on the edges, and they couldn't
breathe, with their heads out of water, so they
flopped their fins in the mud, and tried to breathe
the air, and at last, by pushing with their fins,
they managed to get back into the deeper water
again. Every time this happened, their fins got
a little tougher and stronger, from pushing them-
selves along in the mud, and their lungs got a lit-
tle more used to breathing air, instead of water,
and by the time thousands of years had gone by,
and the water in the marshes was nearly all dried
up, the great-great-great-grandchildren of the
first fish had got so used to breathing air that
they did not mind it a bit, and their fins had got
[31]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
so used to rubbing along on the mud that they
weren't fins any longer, but had changed to short,
strong little webbed feet.
Mother Nature came and looked at them, and
laughed.
"You see, Ocean," she said, "I knew what I
was about. Your fish have turned into reptiles.
They can live on land as well as in the water, and
they have legs and feet."
"How did you do it?" the Ocean asked.
"I did not do it. There is a wonderful law,
made by God, which takes care of all such things.
No matter what sort of a life any creature is in
the habit of living, if you make him live another
kind of life, he will change himself to suit it.
Your fish couldn't breathe air, when they first
tried it, but as soon as they had to breathe it, this
law I speak of helped them, so that their lungs
began to change, and before long, they had grown
a new pair of lungs, fitted to breathe air. It was
the same way with their feet ; the tender fins they
used to swim about in the water with weren't
hard and tough enough to scrape against the mud
and rocks, so they have grown tougher and
[32]
FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN MUD
stronger fins, like little legs, to get about with.
You may be sure that God knew what He was
about when He planned the Universe, and made
its laws. You just watch these reptiles we have
made, and see what happens to them. I'll be
back in a million years or so, and see how things
are getting along. We'll be ready for Man
pretty soon." Then Mother Nature went away
to look after some comets that had gotten lost and
were dashing madly through space, trying to find
out where they belonged.
The Ocean watched the reptiles in the great
salt marsh, and saw many wonderful things. As
the water in the marsh got lower and lower, being
dried up by the Sun, the mud in the marsh got
harder and firmer, and the reptiles in it, who lived
partly on land and partly in the water, found
after a while that there wasn't enough water left
for them all to live in, so thousands of them crept
inland, away from the sea, and made their homes
in the great fern forests, or among the rocks on
the bare hillsides and plains. And no matter
what sort of a life they lived, they changed to
suit it.
[33]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Some made their homes in the soft earth along
the edges of the marsh, squirming along on their
stomachs, and as they did not need feet and legs
to squirm with, their feet and legs got smaller
and smaller, until they did not have any at all,
and they became snakes. Some dug holes in the
hard ground with their feet, to make homes for
themselves, and from digging and digging, their
feet became very strong, with hard, sharp nails
on them. And those that lived under the ground
all the time, feeding on the roots of plants, lost
their eyes and became blind, because they no
longer needed eyes to see with, in their dark bur-
rows, just like the moles we see digging under
our lawns to-day. Some, like the frogs and the
turtles, stayed in the marshes. The frogs made
holes in the mud to live in, but the turtles grew
hard shells on their backs, so that they could carry
their homes about with them, and sleep on the
open ground without any fear that other animals
could harm them. Some of the reptiles, who
liked the water best, crawled out of the marshes
into the rivers, and became crocodiles, and alli-
gators, while those that went inland forgot all
[34]
FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN MUD
about the water, and instead of scales, or shiny
skins, like the reptiles, they grew hair on their
bodies, to protect them and keep them warm.
Some, who took to living in the trees, grew sharp
claws, and long legs, to climb with, while others,
who did not care for climbing, but ran around on
their four feet all day, found that after a time
their feet grew very hard and strong, and be-
cause they did not use their toes any more, they
gradually lost them, and grew hoofs, like the
horse, or the deer. And some, who liked the trees
better than the ground, because there were al-
ways plenty of berries and fruits to be found
there, stayed in the tree-tops all the time, and
never came to the ground. Their front fins had
gradually become larger, from flopping them in
the air all the time, and at last, after many thou-
sands of years, these fins became wings, and the
trees in the forest were full of birds.
The kinds of food the new animals ate had a
great deal to do with their shapes and sizes.
Some, like the deer, the huge elephants we call
mammoths, and the giraffes, who came later,
grew very fond of the fresh green leaves of the
[35]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
<
trees, and ate them most of the time. The giraffe
got into the habit of reaching up so far for the
tender leaves that his neck grew longer and
longer, until now he has the longest neck of any
animal in the world.
Some animals, instead of eating leaves, or
fruit, learned to eat other animals, and so their
teeth and claws got very large and sharp, and
their bodies very quick and strong, like the lions
and tigers, so that they could jump upon the
creatures they ate and tear them to pieces.
Because the Earth was so warm and com-
fortable, and there was plenty to eat, some of the
animals grew to be very large. There were mam-
moth elephants, two or three times as large as the
elephants we see in the circus to-day, with shaggy
hair, and long curving tusks to fight with. And
there were animals like lizards, some of them
almost as big as whales, and others with long
necks, and wings like a bat, that flew about over
the marshes, eating smaller animals, or the leaves
of plants and trees. As the Earth became cooler,
many of these early sorts of animals died out, be-
came extinct, as we call it, and we only know that
[36]
BEFORE MAN
Because the Earth was so warm and comfortahle, and there
was plenty to eat, some of the animals grew to be very large.
[37]
FISH THAT GOT STUCK IN MUD
they once lived, because sometimes we find the
bones or skeletons of them lying in beds of clay
or rock.
All these changes the Ocean watched while
Mother Nature was away, and the laws that God
had made to govern the Universe filled him with
wonder. Even in his own kingdom of the sea he
saw strange things flying fish, and others that
grew swords at the ends of their noses, to spear
their enemies with. And he even saw, at the very
bottom of the sea, where it is always dark, fish
that grew little electric lights like the lights of a
firefly, by which they were able to see their way
about in the darkness.
When the new animals had spread all over the
edge of the Earth, Mother Nature came back to
see how everything was going.
"Splendid," she said, when she had looked
things over. "The plants, and the fish, and the
animals are all doing very nicely indeed. Now
we are ready for Man."
[39]
CHAPTER III
THE APE THAT WALKED LIKE A MAN
WHEN Mother Nature told the Sun that the
Earth was at last ready for Man, the Sun did not
quite understand her.
'What kind of creature is this Man you are
always talking about?" he asked.
"Wait and see," Mother Nature replied, "and
while you are waiting, just keep your eye on that
funny little animal running about there in the
woods the one with the long arms and legs and
tail. "I'll be back after a while and tell you more
about him." Then she went away.
The Sun looked down at the creature Mother
Nature had pointed out to him, and saw a queer
little animal, covered with hair, and looking some-
think like a very small monkey. This animal liked
the fruits and nuts of the trees, and spent most of
his time in the tree-tops, but sometimes he would
go down to the ground, and run about through the
[40]
APE THAT WALKED LIKE MAN
thick jungle forests on all four feet, like a squir-
rel. But when he wanted food, or when some of
the fierce flesh-eating animals attacked him, he
would quickly climb up into a tall tree.
The trees in those early forests grew very close
together, and the little monkey animals found
that they could swing from limb to limb with
their arms, and thus travel for miles, from one
tree to another, without going down to the ground
at all. When they first took to living in the trees
they had smooth skins like their parents the rep-
tiles, but as thousands of years passed, hair grew
out all over them, to protect them and keep them
warm during the chilly rains.
For a long time the Sun watched these crea-
tures, while Mother Nature was away, and he
saw them slowly change. For one thing they
grew larger and stronger all the time, and came
to look more and more like the monkeys and apes
we find in the jungle country even to-day. But
still they were not apes, but from them, both the
apes and Man, are descended.
From their habit of swinging from limb to
limb, or from strong vines, like a trapeze per-
[41]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
former in a circus, these ape-like animals got
more and more in the habit of standing upright,
balancing themselves on their hind feet on one
limb, while they held on with their fore feet to
another limb higher up. But still whenever they
went down to the ground they ran about on
all fours.
If these ape-like creatures had kept on living
in the same sort of a place, where the food grew
in high trees, and the forest beneath was filled
with savage animals ready to eat them up, they
would have kept right on being apes. Indeed,
most of them have stayed that way, for we find
their descendants living in the jungles of the
tropics to-day, not very different from the way
they were so many hundreds of thousands of
years ago. But about that time Mother Nature
stopped by to see how things on the Earth were
getting along.
"What are those creatures doing that I spoke
to you about?" she asked the Sun.
"Nothing, that I can see," the Sun replied,
"except playing about in the tree tops, and eating
nuts and fruit."
[42]
APE THAT WALKED LIKE MAN
"That won't do at all," said Mother Nature.
"We must get them up into the hills, where
things will be different. I see some splendid big
valleys over there on the mountain side, where
there aren't many wild beasts to eat them, and
where the trees and bushes are low, and full of
nuts and fruit. It is the very place for them."
"How are you going to get them there?" asked
the Sun.
"I think I will have Wind blow up a storm,
and set the jungle on fire with Lightning. Then,
when the fire drives them up the mountain side,
some of them will surely wander into the valleys."
So the Wind blew up a great storm, and the
Lightning flashed and set the jungle on fire, and
all the beasts ran before the flames, afraid. Some
went in one direction and some in another, but a
few of the ape-like animals ran into the hills, and
here they found a wide, peaceful valley, with a
stream running through it, and plenty of food
about for them to eat, so they took refuge there.
It was not so warm in the mountain country as
it had been in the jungle below, because the
higher up in the air we go, the cooler it gets, and
[43]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
we often see snow on the tops of high mountains,
even in the middle of summer. And where it is
cooler, the trees do not grow so thick and tall and
close together as they do in the hot jungle. So
the trees and bushes in the valley which the ape-
like creatures had found were smaller, and easier
to climb than the ones they had been used to, and
on many of them the fruit and nuts hung so close
to the ground that they could easily be picked
without climbing at all. There were no savage
animals in the valley, either, for the fierce flesh-
eating beasts preferred to stay down in the jun-
gle, where there was always plenty for them
to eat.
The ape creatures had an easy time of it in
their new home. When they saw that no enemies
came to eat them up, and that there was plenty of
food all about, fruit, and nuts, and sweet-tasting
roots that grew underground, they began to get
out of the habit of spending all their time in the
trees. But they still ran about on all fours, like
the other animals.
When Mother Nature came along she was very
much pleased.
[44]
APE THAT WALKED LIKE MAN
"They are beginning to change already," she
said. "See how much larger and stronger they
are. But I think I might as well take away their
tails."
"Why?" said the Sun. "It seems to me their
tails are very useful things. Some of the mon-
keys down in the jungle are beginning to use
them to help themselves in climbing about in
the trees."
"That is all very well for monkeys," smiled
Mother Nature. "They need them, for they are
going to be monkeys and live in trees all the rest
of their lives. But these animals are different.
They do riot need to climb trees so much now, for
there is plenty of food near the ground, and very
few enemies about from whom they must escape."
"But," objected the Sun, "a time may come
when there will not be any food near the ground,
and who knows when some hungry beasts may
wander into the valley and eat all your new
creatures up?"
"What you say is very true, Sun," replied
Mother Nature. "Those things of which you
speak are very likely to happen. But I am going
[45]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
to take away their tails just the same, for it would
never do to have them turn into monkeys, like
the creatures down in the jungles. These ani-
mals are going to be different. For one thing,
they must learn to walk about on their hind feet,
instead of running on all fours, like the other
beasts. And to teach them that, I have got to
keep them out of the tree-tops. If they haven't
sense enough to find some way to get food, and
protect themselves from their enemies, they will
surely starve, or be eaten up. But I am certain
they will get along."
So the ape creatures lived happily in their wide
valley, picking the fruit and nuts from the low
bushes and trees, and sleeping safely in grassy
beds on the ground, and because Mother Nature
did not think they needed tails, she took them
away, just as her great laws had taken away the
feet of the snake, and the eyes of the mole, when
they were no longer needed. As the years went
by, and new generations of apes were born, their
tails were smaller and smaller, and finally, when
a very long time indeed had passed, they were
born without any tails at all.
[46]
APE THAT WALKED LIKE MAN
The Sun watched, for hundreds and thousands
of years, and he saw that after a while the whole
valley came to be full of the new creatures with-
out tails. At first they ran about on all fours,
picking food, or climbing the trees, the way they
had always done, but because there were so many
of them to be fed, it often happened that food
on the bushes became scarce near the ground, and
the ape creatures had to stand up on their hind
legs in order to reach it. After a while, from
standing up on their hind legs so much, they got
used to it, and came to like it, and walked about
that way most of the time.
The Sun saw this strange sight of an animal
walking about, upright, on its hind legs, instead
of running about on all fours, as all the other
animals did, and because he had never seen such
a sight before, it surprised him very much indeed.
"Is he a Man, Mother Nature?" he asked.
"No," Mother Nature told him. "He is not a
Man yet."
"Why not?" said the Sun.
"Because he has not yet learned to think. He
is just like all the other animals so far. But I
[47]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
am going to make him think very soon, and when
he does, he will begin to be a Man."
"How are you going to make him think?" the
Sun asked.
"I am going to make him hungry."
"Will that make him think?"
'Yes. If he needs food to keep himself alive,
and doesn't find it right at his hand, he will have
to think of a way to get it, or starve. And I
don't believe he will let himself starve. You see,
Sun, I have tried the same thing over and over,
on a great many other worlds, and the laws that
God has made always work."
Then Mother Nature sent for Cold and had a
talk with him.
"Cold," she said, "I want you to get to work
and cool the Earth off a little more quickly.
Those animals down there are much too
comfortable."
'Very well," said Cold, flapping his great
frosty wings. "Just watch me make them shiver
and shake."
Then Mother Nature went away, but as she
went, she gave the Earth a little push, very
[48]
APE THAT WALKED LIKE MAN
gently, so as not to disturb things too much. And
the Earth, which had been spinning around per-
fectly straight and upright, like a huge top, now
leaned over a little, as it went swinging around
the Sun.
"What did you do that for, Mother Nature?"
asked the Sun.
"I did it, Sun, to make the Seasons. From
now on, instead of it being warm all the time,
there will be Winter and Summer on the
Earth."
"How will tipping the Earth over like that
make Winter and Summer?" the Sun asked.
"It is very simple. As long as the Earth
swung around you in an upright position, your
rays struck upon it just the same way the whole
year round. Now that I have pushed it over a
little, so that it no longer stands upright, don't
you see that for half the year you will shine more
strongly on the lower part of the Earth, which is
turned toward you, and less strongly on the upper
part, which I have tilted away from you. That
will make Summer on the lower part of the
Earth, where you are shining brightest, and Win-
[49]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
ter on the upper part, where you are shin-
ing least."
"I see," said the Sun, looking down at the
Earth. "I can't reach the part that is turned
away from me so well."
"Exactly. But six months from now, when
the Earth has swung halfway around you, and
is on the opposite side of you, the part that is now
turned away from you will be turned toward you,
and it will be Summer there, while the part that
is having Summer now, will then be having
Winter."
"It is very interesting," said the Sun, "but I
still don't see what you did it for."
"I did it to help make my Man think," said
Mother Nature, as she went away.
[50]
CHAPTER IV
THE HUNGRY APE AND THE BUNCH OF WILD FRUIT
IN the valley where the Ape-Men lived the
weather began to get colder and colder, year
after year, and they were having a hard time to
find enough to eat. There were thousands and
thousands of them, now, and there were not
enough roots, and berries, and nuts, and birds'
eggs to go around, so the Ape-Men were often
hungry.
One morning a young ape went out to try to
find something for breakfast. He had not eaten
a thing since the afternoon before, and then all
he had was a handful of dry shrivelled berries,
and he was almost starving.
He went all through the valley, hoping to find
some of the sweet golden fruit that used to be so
plentiful, but he could not find any, for the other
apes had picked it all.
At last, climbing over the steep rocks at the
[51]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
upper end of the valley, he came across a tree
which bore the kind of fruit he liked so much. At
first he thought it was empty, but soon, to his
delight, he discovered three large and beautiful
bunches far out on the end of a slender limb.
His first impulse was to climb out on the limb
and gather the fruit, but when he got about half-
way out, the slender limb began to crack, and
looking down he saw that it hung over the edge
of a high, steep cliff, and that if he fell, he would
be dashed to pieces. So he got back off the limb
in a hurry, and came down to the ground.
The next thing he did was very stupid, but he
had not yet begun to think. He took a stone and
threw it at the fruit, as he had often done before,
and knocked one of the bunches down. It fell
over the edge of the cliff and was dashed to bits
on the rocks below, far out of his reach.
By this time the ape had tried all the things he
knew, and as he could not think of anything else
to do, he sat down and gazed at the fruit for a
long time in silence. There were tears in his eyes,
for he was very hungry, but he could think of no
way to get the fruit.
[52]
THE HUNGRY APE
Mother Nature, who was watching the efforts
of her Ape-Man, pointed him out to the Sun.
"You see, Sun," she said, "now that the cold
has made food so scarce, my children in the valley
are getting very hungry. That poor creature
down there actually has tears in his eyes."
"He may be hungry," said the Sun, "but I
don't see that it has made him think, the way you
said it would."
"He is doing his best," said Mother Nature.
'You see, he hasn't much of a brain to think with,
but what little he has is trying very hard to find
a way to get that bunch of fruit for his
breakfast."
The Sun laughed.
"How stupid your Ape-Man is," he said.
'There is a splendid big stick lying in the grass
right under the tree, with a hook at the end of it
where a limb has been broken off. All the foolish
creature has to do is to take the stick in his hands,
pull the bunch of fruit toward him with it, and
he will have his breakfast. It is very simple
and easy."
"It may seem easy to you, Sun," said Mother
[53]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Nature, "but it isn't easy at all to a poor creature
who has never thought before in all his life. It
has taken millions of years to bring this Ape-
Man from the mud and slime of the Ocean, to
where he is now, but all that was not so hard, as
it is to make him pick up that stick and gather
that bunch of fruit. If he does it, he will have
had an idea for the first time in his life; he will
have begun to think, and from now on he will not
be an animal any longer, but a Man."
"Couldn't we help him in some way?" asked
the Sun.
Mother Nature looked down at the Ape-Man
sitting beneath the tree.
"Suppose you shine very brightly on the stick,
Sun," she said. "It may make him notice it."
So the Sun shone very brightly on the stick,
but the Ape-Man did not move, but sat gazing at
the fruit.
"Wait," said Mother Nature. "I will try
something else. There is a snake lying among
the roots of the tree. I will make him crawl over
the stick and move it a little. Then perhaps the
Ape-Man will notice it."
[54]
THE HUNGRY APE
So Mother Nature called the Wind to her, and
told him to blow gently against the tree and
cause some dead limbs and twigs to fall. The
Wind blew, and snapped off some little twigs,
and one of them fell near the snake and woke it
up. Then the snake squirmed off, and in doing so
he moved the stick a little, so that the Ape-Man,
whose eyes were very sharp, noticed it as it
glistened in the sun. He got up from where he
was sitting, and went over to the stick and gazed
at it stupidly for quite a while.
"Goodness, how slow he is," said the Sun.
"Hasn't the creature any brains at all?"
"Not much," replied Mother Nature, "but I
think he has an idea at last just a faint little
idea moving about in his brain like a shadow.
See, he is going to pick up the stick."
The Sun looked, and saw the Ape-Man take
the stick from the ground. He held it in his
hand for several moments, looking at it. Then
he looked at the bunch of fruit, and after that, he
looked back at the stick again. When he had
done this two or three times, he took the stick,
and going to the edge of the cliff, poked awk-
[55]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
wardly at one of the remaining bunches of fruit.
"He had better look out," said the Sun, "or he
will knock that one down and lose it too."
He had no sooner spoken, than the heavy bunch
of fruit fell from the limb and dashed to the rocks
far below. The Ape-Man gave a long cry of
anger and disappointment. Then he began pok-
ing at the third and last bunch. But this time he
was more careful. After a few moments the
hook at the end of the stick caught around the
limb, and when the Ape-Man pulled on it, he saw
that the fruit began to move toward him. He
chattered with joy, at this, and pulled harder and
harder, and at last the slender branch bent until
the bunch of fruit was right in his hands. Then
the Ape-Man dropped the stick, and sitting down
on the grass ate the fruit as quickly as he could.
After that he threw himself down in the grass
and went to sleep.
The Sun, who had been watching him care-
fully, laughed.
"Such a little thing, to make so much fuss
about," he said.
"It may seem a little thing to you, Sun," said
[56]
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THE FIRST THINKER
The hook at the end of the stick caught around the limb, and
when the Ape-Man pulled on it, he saw that the fruit began
to move toward him.
[57]
THE HUNGRY APE
Mother Nature, "but it is really the biggest
thing you have ever seen in your life. For the
first time, you have seen the birth of a Man. He
is very slow and clumsy and stupid, now, but
after a while his children and his children's chil-
dren are going to become so strong and cunning
and powerful by means of their little brains, that
they will rule the Earth, and all the other animals
will be afraid of them, and bow down to them.
And they will harness the Wind, and the Rivers,
and the Lightning, and cause Heat and Cold to
do their bidding, and they will defy the Ocean,
and conquer the Air, and make even you, Sun,
work for them and serve them."
"Ha-Ha!" laughed the Sun. "Those little
Ape-Men make me work for them! I don't be-
lieve it."
"Wait and see," said Mother Nature. "I
know what I am talking about, for I have seen
the same thing happen, many times, in other
worlds that you know nothing about. And Man
will do all these things I tell you of, because God
has given him a brain and taught him to think.
"How has God taught him to think?" said the
[59]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Sun. "It was the fruit, and the snake, and the
Wind, and you and I who taught him."
Mother Nature looked at the Sun and frowned.
"Don't you know, you foolish Sun, that God
made the fruit, and the snake, and the Wind, and
the Earth, and you, and everything else in the
Universe, and that if it were not for His laws, you
wouldn't be here at all. You had better go on
shining, and not make foolish remarks about
things you do not understand." Then Mother
Nature went away.
The Ape-Man, asleep in the sun, woke up
after a time, and feeling thirsty he went down to
the stream in the valley to get a drink. But he
took the stick he had used to get the fruit, with
him. It was a nice stick, straight and strong, like
a spear, except for the short hooked limb at the
end of it, and the Ape-Man liked it, because it
had helped him get something to eat.
When he went back that night to the place in
the grass where he usually slept, some of the
other Ape-People crowded about him, chattering
in surprise at seeing him carrying the stick, for
this was something none of them had ever done
[60]
THE HUNGRY APE
before. One of the crowd tried to take the stick
away from him, but he drew back and hit the
other over the head with it and knocked him
down. After that the others were afraid of him,
and let him alone. And although the Ape-People
had no language, and did not know how to speak
as we do, they used different kinds of cries and
grunts, when they were angry, or cold, or afraid.
When anything frightened them, they uttered a
cry that sounded like "Adh!", and because they
said this whenever the Ape-Man with the club
came among them, it grew to be a sort of name
for him, and he shouted it out to terrify them,
when he made his way through the woods.
After a while, others of the apes got clubs too,
and used them to fight with, but except the stones
they sometimes threw, Adh's stick was the very
first weapon used by Man.
Mother Nature was satisfied with her new
Man, so far as he had gone, but she knew that he
would have to suffer, if he was to learn, and al-
though she did not like to make him suffer, she
had to do it.
"You can blow all you like, Cold," she said. "I
[61]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
want my people to suffer. Pain is not a pleasant
thing, but it is only through pain that they will
ever learn."
[62]
CHAPTER V
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
A COLD wind blew through the valley where the
Ape-Men lived, and the trees and bushes were
brown and bare of fruit. The rays of the Sun,
which used to come down straight and hot all day,
now shone slantwise, because the Earth had been
tipped over, and they seemed to have very little
warmth. The days, too, were shorter, and the
nights were longer, and cold. All the Ape-Men
were obliged to huddle together in their beds of
grass to keep warm. They did not know that
Mother Nature had tipped over the Earth to
make Winter and Summer, but they were very
uncomfortable, and they did not like it.
But the worst thing of all was, that there was
almost nothing to eat. Always before there had
been some kind of fruit, or berries, all the year
round. Now they were able to find only a few
[63]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
nuts, and the sweet bulbs which grew at the roots
of certain plants, and the smaller animals got
most of these. Even the nesting birds they some-
times caught and ate had gone where it was
warmer. Pretty soon there was nothing to eat at
all, and the Ape-Men were starving.
Adh, who had begun to think a little, puzzled
about this for a long time, but could not under-
stand it. Of course, if the Ape-People had stored
up food, during the Summer, they would have
had something to eat, when the cold weather
came, but they had never thought of doing such a
.thing, because there had usually been enough to
eat, before. Now they did not know what to do,
and as they could no longer find any food in the
valley, they gradually wandered off, down to-
ward the low, hot jungle-lands from which they
had come. Here they found things to eat, but
they also found lions and great sabre-toothed
tigers and other fierce beasts to eat them, and as
they had long ago forgotten their old trick of
living and sleeping and seeking safety from their
enemies in the tree-tops, it was not long before
they were all eaten up.
[64]
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
When the Sun saw this, he was very much
surprised.
"Look, Mother Nature," he said. "Your Ape-
People have all been eaten up."
'You are wrong, Sun," replied Mother Na-
ture. "Adh and the ape woman he has taken for
his wife are still in the valley. He was the only
one who had learned to think, so the others were
of no use and I had to get rid of them. Before
long the children of Adh and his wife will fill the
valley with a race of Men, and from there they
will spread all over the Earth."
Adh did not go with the others for two rea-
sons. The first was that they did not like him,
because he made them afraid of him, and so they
went away without him. The second reason was,
that Adh's wife had a tiny baby boy to nurse and
take care of, and it was easier, to stay where they
were, than to wander off through the jungles.
Now that all the others had gone, Adh managed
to find enough roots and nuts to keep himself and
his little family alive.
Soon after the others had left, it began to rain,
and every day the cold rain beat down on Adh
[65]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
and his family and drenched them. Even their
grass nest under the boughs of a thick tree, was
turned into a pool of mud and water, on which the
sun never shone to dry it and keep it warm. Cold
and Rain were making the new Ape-Man suffer,
as Mother Nature had told them to do. Adh, as
he wandered about the valley hunting for a little
food, tried very hard to think of a way to keep
himself and his family comfortable, but no new
ideas came to him. Occasionally he managed to
catch a young bird, which he greedily devoured,
but they were very scarce and hard to find.
"Look at the stupid creature," laughed the
Sun, peeping for a moment through the heavy
rain-clouds. "He hasn't sense enough to find a
hole in the rocks, where he would be dry and
warm.'
Mother Nature did not answer. Instead, she
waited until she saw Adh climbing over the rocks
at the upper end of the valley, searching for the
nests of wild birds he sometimes found there.
Then she called Cold to her.
"Blow your hardest for a few moments, Cold,"
she said.
[66]
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
Cold puffed out his cheeks and blew a freezing
blast down the valley, and all the falling drops of
Rain turned to bits of ice, like hail, which cut
Adh's shoulders and arms and back, and hurt
him, in spite of his thick coat of hair. To escape
from the storm, he ran beneath some over-
hanging rocks, and suddenly found himself in a
little cave, its floor covered with soft dry moss.
Here he was quite safe from the hail and rain,
and he was very much pleased.
While he was standing in the cave, Adh sud-
denly had another thought. He wished that his
wife and child were with him. And no sooner
had he thought of them than he dashed out of the
cave, and forgetting all about the hail and rain,
he ran to the nest in the grass where they lay
trying to keep warm, and brought them as fast
as he could back to the nice dry cave. And this
cave was Man's very first home.
"You see," said Mother Nature to the Sun,
"whenever I want my new Man to think, I send
him some kind of trouble. If I hadn't made him
hungry, he would never have got the idea of pull-
ing the bunch of fruit out of the tree with his
[67]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
stick, and now, because I made him cold and wet,
he has found himself a home."
"What are you going to make him do next?"
asked the Sun.
"Wait and see," said Mother Nature. "But
don't forget that I have given him a wife and
child to think about, now, and he will do more, on
fcheir account, than he would ever do, alone, for in
his simple way, he loves them."
"What is Love?" asked the Sun.
"It is one of the great laws of the Universe,
that God has made, a feeling, or instinct, that
causes all His creatures to want a mate to live
with, and thus have children. If it were not for
this law, there would never be any children, and
all the living creatures on the Earth would dis-
appear in a very little while."
"This Love must be a very queer thing," said
the Sun. "I do not understand it."
"And yet, Sun, you will see, some day, that it
is the most wonderful law that God has made.
Without it, Man would never amount to any-
thing at all. From now on my creature Adh is
going to think of doing a great many things,
[68]
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
because of his wife and child, that he would not
think of doing without them."
When Adh got his wife and child into the cave,
they were no longer cold and wet, but they were
still very hungry, and all day long the Ape-Man
wandered through the valley, looking for some-
thing to eat. Sometimes, when all he could find
was a few dried berries, or a handful of little
grains from the tall grasses that grew here and
there, he would carry them back to his wife, in-
stead of eating them himself. In the past, before
he had any wife, he would never have thought of
such a thing as going hungry for the sake of some
one else, but now it was different; he thought of
his wife and child.
At last there came a day when from morning
to night he could not find a single scrap of food.
Everything was gone, and he was weak from
hunger. He went down to the shore of the little
lake that lay in the bottom of the valley, and
throwing himself on the ground, drank as much
water as he could, to fill his empty stomach.
Then he sat up and stared at the cold, grey sky,
not knowing what to do. Presently he saw a
[69]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
great bird, like a fish-hawk, swoop down to the
surface of the lake, and rise a moment later with
a shining fish in its claws. Then, as Adh watched,
another hawk flew up and tried to take the fish
away from the first one. The two birds screamed
and tore at each other, and as they fought, the
fish the first one had been carrying fell to the
ground close to where Adh w r as sitting.
He walked over to where it lay, and picked it
up, more from curiosity than anything else, for
he had never thought of such a thing as eating
a fish. For thousands of years his parents before
him had eaten nothing but fruit, and roots, and
nuts, with occasionally an egg or a young bird,
and he had always done just as they had done.
He did not know that the flesh of fish, or animals,
was good to eat.
As he held the fish in his hands, he smelt the
fresh blood from the wound made by the claws
of the fish-hawk and it made him hungrier than
ever. Half starved as he was, he could have
eaten anything, and without thinking any more
about it, he tore the fish apart and put a piece of
it in his mouth. It tasted strange to him, and
[70]
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
he did not like it, but his stomach was very
empty, and almost before he knew what he was
about, he had eaten the whole fish.
After that, he felt better, and sat on the edge
of the lake for a long time, watching the fish
swimming about in the shallow water. Then
he thought of his wife. She would want
something to eat, too. How could he get
another fish? He tried for a long time to
catch one in his hands, but they were too quick
for him.
Then he thought of his club, and taking it in
his hands, he did his best to hit one of the fish with
it, but every time he failed. Once he struck so
hard that the club was splintered against a rock,
and the heavy end of it broken off. Adh looked
at the piece left in his hands and felt sad, for he
loved his club, and always carried it about with
him. Pretty soon he noticed, as he felt the
broken and splintered end of the stick, that it
was very sharp, and he thought to himself, why
could he not drive the sharp end into the back
of one of the fish, as it lay in the mud. It took
him a long time to do this, but by lying among
[71]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the rushes, and keeping very quiet, he finally
succeeded. Reaching down, he seized the fish he
had speared in his hands.
"Look!" said Mother Nature to the Sun.
"My new Man has made himself a spear."
When Adh gave the fish to his wife, she did not
understand what he wanted her to do with it,
but finally, by chattering, and making signs, he
got her to eat a little of it. The new kind of food
made her rather sick, at first, but after a while,
as there was nothing else to eat, she made a meal
of it, and from then on Adh went to the lake
every day and speared a fish or two for their
dinner. By the time the cold rainy season was
over, and the warm weather had come again, he
and his wife had grown quite used to eating fish,
and had even got to like it.
Mother Nature watched all this and smiled
to herself.
"See how quickly my Ape-Man is learning to
think," she said to the Sun. "Already he has
found a home, and taught himself to get food
from the rivers and lakes, instead of from the
trees and bushes, and he has made himself a
[72]
THE WOODEN SPEAR
Reaching down, he seized in his hands the fish he had speared,
[73]
THE CAVE AND THE FISH
spear. I knew he was not going to let him-
self starve."
'What is he going to do next?" asked the Sun,
who was getting very much interested in the
funny little Ape-Man.
"I think I shall teach him to fight," Mother
Nature said.
"To fight? What for?"
"So that he can protect himself against his
enemies. When I took away his tail, you said he
would either starve, or be eaten up. Well, he
hasn't starved, and I can't let him be eaten up.
He will have plenty of enemies, before he gets
through, and if he doesn't know how to fight,
they will destroy him."
'Will this thing you call Love help him to
fight?" asked the Sun.
"Yes. He will fight twice as hard, because of
his love for his wife and child. If you don't be-
lieve it, just wait and see."
[75]
CHAPTER VI
ADH'S FIRST FIGHT
WHEREVER he went, Adh carried about with
him a club. He had found himself a new one,
now that his first was broken, and this new club
was short and heavy, with a great hard knob on
the end of it, as big as his two fists. He had
broken it from the limb of a tree, and rubbed
and polished it on the rocky floor of the cave
until it was hard and smooth. Besides the club,
he had made himself a long straight spear, with
the end of it rubbed to a point against the rocks.
He used the spear for getting fish, and had be-
come so skilful that he hardly ever missed them.
(/
One night, when the cold rains were over, and
the trees in the valley were covered with fresh
new leaves, Adh was sitting on a flat rock
in front of his cave, eating a large fish.
He was not thinking of anything, except how
good the fish tasted, when suddenly his quick ears
[76]
ADH'S FIRST FIGHT
heard a sound, and looking up he saw a great
beast, like a bear, covered with hair, making its
way slowly up the rocky hillside toward him.
It was a huge, clumsy animal, much larger
than himself, but it walked on all fours, snuffing
the air as though it smelt the fish Adh had been
eating. The Ape-Man had never seen such a
creature before.
The hair on Adh's neck stood straight up, for
he was very much frightened, and his first
thought was to run away as fast as his legs would
carry him. Then he remembered his wife and
child, lying asleep inside the cave, and instead of
running away, he picked up some heavy stones
and threw them at the oncoming enemy.
One of the stones hit the beast on the shoulder,
but instead of stopping, it gave a grunt of rage
and came on faster than ever, straight toward
the cave.
Adh picked up his club from where it lay on
the rock beside him and stood before the door of
the cave, chattering and screaming with anger
and fear. His wife, awakened by the noise, came
out of the cave and stood just behind him, hold-
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
ing the young one in her arms, and also uttering
shrill cries.
The creature's black snout, with small fiery
red eyes, came slowly forward until Adh could
feel its breath on his face. Then, just as the
beast started to rear up on its hind legs, Adh
raised his club, and springing forward, struck the
animal across the nose with all his might.
The Ape-Man was very strong, and his blow
was a terrible one. The great beast gave a howl
of pain, and rearing up, tried to reach Adh with
its huge claws. But Adh's fear had all left him,
now. His eyes gleamed, and his mouth foamed
with rage. Raising his club he struck again and
again, until the beast, with blood streaming from
its crushed snout, turned tail and ran away down
the rocky hillside. There was a great deep
wound in Adh's breast, where the claws of the
beast had torn him, but he hardly knew it, in his
joy at winning the fight. He pounded his
clenched fist on his chest until the sound echoed
through the valley, and uttered shrill cries of
defiance.
His wife came up to him and stroked and
[78]
THE CAVE MAN'S FIGHT WITH A BEAR
The great beast gave a howl of pain and, rearing up, tried
to reach Adh with its huge claws.
[79]
ADH'S FIRST FIGHT
patted him proudly, chattering all the time with
pleasure. This made Adh feel very happy, and
he pounded his club on the rocks and grunted
with delight. He had made this great beast fear
him, and the thought filled him with pride.
That night, as he lay on the floor of the cave, a
terrible fear came over him. What if the crea-
ture should come back again, while he was asleep,
and carry him off. He got up, and crouched for
a long time in the door of the cave, his club ready
in his hands. After a while he grew sleepy and
wished that there were something across the cave
door to keep the beast out, in case he came back.
The thought worried him so much that at last he
went out, and getting four or five large stones,
rolled them to the mouth of the cave, and after
crawling inside, fixed them so that the hole by
which he crept in and out was almost blocked.
After that he went to sleep without feeling
afraid.
The next morning he followed the bloody trail
of the beast over the rocks, but lost it far down
the valley. The creature had disappeared. Adh
went on spearing fish and forgot all about his
[81]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
enemy. From that time on, Adh often had to
fight for his life and that of his wife and child,
but he was not afraid.
As the years went by, his boy grew up to be
strong like his father, and very smart and quick,
and when he was old enough, Adh got into the
habit of taking him along when he went
down the valley after fish, or to gather fruit or
nuts. The boy carried a spear, like his father,
and used it very skilfully, so that the little family
never wanted for food. There were other chil-
dren, now, and later on, grandchildren and great-
grandchildren, and Adh had made the cave big-
ger, by scraping away the soft rock of the walls.
Each year, with the coming of the warm Spring,
the rains ceased, and all the trees and bushes in
the valley were soon covered with bright new
leaves, and later, with blossoms and fruit. Adh
and his family were very happy.
The oldest boy they called Kee, because when
he was very young he always said "Kee-Kee"
when anything pleased him. And before long
the cries or grunts they used for the things they
saw about them, such as fruit, or fish, or the Sun,
[82]
THE HOME OP EARLY MAN
The first houses built by man consisted of boulders piled up to
form a cave and covered with sod. The one shown below rep-
resents the earliest attempts with rough, unhewn stone.
Above is a stone house of later date showing that the
boulders had been hewn for the purpose.
[83]
ADH'S FIRST FIGHT
the Rain, or the cave, came to be used over and
over, and in this way they began to have words
for things. There were not many words at first,
but Man had invented speech, which was some-
thing none of the animals had ever done.
Mother Nature watched the progress of her
children with a smile.
"Just see," she said to the Sun, "how quickly
they are learning. Did I not tell you that Love
would teach my Ape-Man many things? If he
had not loved his wife and child, he would have
run away when the bear came to attack him, but
because of them he stayed, and fought. And he
has made a door to his cave, to keep his enemies
away, during the night."
"What are those strange grunts and cries I
hear them using?" the Sun asked.
"They are beginning to make a language,"
Mother Nature replied. "Before long, they will
be able to say many things to each other, and be
understood. They are certainly doing very well.
I hope nothing happens to them."
"It seems to me they are awfully slow," said
the Sun.
[85]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
"Not at all. Think how many thousands of
years they have ahead of them. There is no
hurry, you know. The Earth is only a hundred
million years old. They have plenty of time. I
think I shall go away now, and take a look at
another sun I am making, many times bigger
than you are. I shan't be back for several thou-
sand years. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said the Sun, in a surly voice, for
it made him very angry to think that there were
any suns in the Universe bigger than he was.
[86]
CHAPTER VII
EA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
ADH had been dead a long time, now, and Ra
was his great-great-great-great-grandson. He
was called Ra because that was the word the Ape-
Men used to mean big, or strong, and Ra was
the strongest boy in the valley.
He lived with his mother and father and
several brothers and sisters in a cave high up
among the rocks, and because his father was
lame, Ra had to do most of the work for the
family. He knew how to say a number of words,
queer little cries and grunts that meant things,
and the hair on his body was not as thick and
shaggy as Adh's had been. The Ape-People had
been living in caves, protected from the weather,
for a long time now, and as they did not need so
much hair to keep them warm, the great law of
Nature we have heard about before, had begun
to take their hair away from them. But it was
[87]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
not until Man began to wear clothes that he
really lost his coat of hair.
There were many Ape-Men in the valley now,
descendants of Adh and his wife, and they had
hollowed other caves in the soft rock and earth
of the hillsides at the upper end of the valley,
digging with sharp-pointed sticks and stones.
They lived on raw fish, and fruits, roots and nuts,
just as Adh and his family had done before them,
and the eggs of wild birds, and the young
fledglings, which they found in nests among the
trees and rocks. They carried long wooden
spears, and clubs, and were quick and strong.
And because there were plenty of fish in the
stream, and in the lake at the lower end of the
valley, even during the cold rainy season, they
had never thought of storing up food for the
Winter. Of such things as clothes, or fire, they
knew nothing at all.
There were high, rough hills, covered with
thick forests, all about the valley, except at its
lower end, where the great lake spread out, pour-
ing its waters into the country below through a
narrow gorge between two hills. Because the
[88]
RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
valley was protected in this way, few enemies
came into it to attack the cave men. When one
appeared, as sometimes happened, the hunters,
with their clubs and spears, would attack it in a
body, and while it often happened that some of
them were killed, they usually were able to over-
come the intruder in the end, or drive him from
the valley. The most terrible of these enemies
was the sabre-toothed tiger, larger than any tiger
you have seen in the circus, with two long sharp
teeth or fangs, curving down like sabres from his
upper jaw. When this terrible beast appeared,
the cave men usually hid in their caves, afraid.
Once, when Ra was about twenty years old, a
huge beast like an elephant, with long shaggy
hair and great curving tusks came splashing up
along the marshy shores of the lake, and began
to strip and eat the tender leaves and fruit from
the young bushes and trees.
Ra, who was spearing fish at the upper end of
the lake, had never seen such a creature before,
and when he caught sight of it coming towards
him he was very much frightened.
He quickly gave the alarm, and soon twenty or
[89]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
more of the cave men ran up, and surrounding
the huge creature, began to attack it by throwing
stones at it, at the same time making a loud noise,
hoping to scare it away.
The great creature did not mind the stones, at
first, for he scarcely felt them, as they bounced
from his thick, hairy sides, but soon one of the
stones struck him near the eye and hurt him, and
he turned on the cave men with a snort of pain,
waving his long trunk about in the air.
When the cave men saw him coming they did
their best to get out of the way, at the same time
striking with all their might at his huge sides with
their spears. The spears, however, with their
wooden points, while strong enough to pierce a
fish, were of no use against the elephant's tough
hide, and fell back blunted or broken. Ra, as
he saw the great beast coming toward him, its lit-
tle red eyes gleaming, its long trunk swinging to
and fro, drove his spear with all his might at its
flank but the point was splintered from the blow
and he barely escaped with his life. Three of his
companions were trampled to death by the sav-
age creature as they tried to escape, and two
[90]
THE FIGHT WITH A MAMMOTH
The cave men did their best to get out of the way, at the
same time striking with all their might at his huge sides
with their spears.
[91]
RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
more were seized in its great trunk and crushed.
The cave men, frightened, ran back to their
caves and sat there, helpless, until the animal,
unable to find them, had eaten his fill of the leaves
and fruit, and gone away, leaving a trail of
stripped and broken bushes and trees behind him.
Ra worried a great deal about this fight. He
was very angry with the beast because it had
killed one of his brothers, and he could not under-
stand why his spear had failed to pierce the ele-
phant's hide. Its point, rubbed sharp on a rock,
had always been strong enough to kill the largest
fish, but now it was blunt and broken, and Ra did
not like it any more.
As he sat in the sun before the cave, trying to
cut a new point to his spear with a stone, an idea
came into his head. Why could he not in some
way fasten the stone to the end of his spear? The
stone, he knew, was hard enough not to break
against the toughest hide. It was a large and
clumsy stone, however, and Ra soon saw that
he could do nothing with it.
The thought pleased him, but he said nothing
to any of his friends about it. Instead, he hur-
[93]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
ried off to a place on the shore of the lake where
a few days before he had seen some very sharp
flat stones, quite different from the clumsy bit of
rock he had found near the cave.
He gathered several pieces of this stone, and
amused himself by striking them against each
other and breaking them. At last he got what
he wanted, a flat, narrow piece, shaped something
like the leaf of a tree, and about as long as his
hand. The stone was very hard, and it took him
hours to chip and rub it down until it had a sharp
point. When at last it was done, he had another
thing to think about. How was he to fasten the
stone to the end of the spear?
He took the spear and looked at it. The blow
he had struck against the elephant's side had split
the end of it. After a great deal of trouble Ha
managed to force the thin flat stone into the split
end of the spear. It looked very well, he thought,
but he knew it would not stay there unless it
were fastened in some way. Glancing about, he
saw some of the long, tough marsh grasses that
he had often used to string his fish together, when
carrying them home. He took some strands of
[94]
THE BEGINNING OF THE STONE AGE
Ra's invention of the stone-pointed spear gave the cave men
new courage so that they became very fierce and bold.
[95]
RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
this grass and wrapped them around the end of
the spear in such a way that the stone point was
held tightly in place. It was a clumsy piece of
work, for Ra had never used the grasses in such
a way before, but it was strong, as he found out
by spearing several fish in the shallow water of
the marsh. When he went home, he was very
proud of what he had done, and showed the
new spear to his father, and to some of his
brothers.
His father did not think much of it, and said
wooden-pointed spears were good enough for
anybody, but his brothers chattered with pleas-
ure, and got Ra to show them where he had found
the white stone, and how he had chipped the
spear point into shape, and fastened it on. Be-
fore long, they too had stone-pointed spears, and
as they made more and more of them they made
them stronger and better, using the twisted en-
trails or guts of fish to bind the points in place,
instead of the marsh grasses. Soon all the men
in the valley were armed with stone-pointed
spears, and some of them, taking Ra's idea, fixed
stones in the ends of their heavy clubs, and with
[97]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the making of these stone-pointed spears and
axes, Man had begun what is known as the
Stone Age.
Ra's invention was a great blessing to the cave
men, for now they were able to fight their
enemies on much more even terms. This gave
them new courage, and they became very fierce
and bold. But it was not only for making
weapons that they began to use the hard, sharp
bits of flint Ra had discovered. They soon found
them useful for many other things. It was easier,
to cut a fish to pieces, with a sharp-edged stone,
than to tear it to bits with their fingers, so they
began the use of flint knives, and later on they
made all sorts of tools out of stone, which helped
them very much in their daily lives. But these
things came later.
"My new people have learned a great deal,
since I have been away," said Mother Nature to
the Sun. "Now I am going to teach them to
eat meat."
"How will you do that?" the Sun asked.
"By taking away their fish, so that when the
Winter comes, they will be hungry."
[98]
"WeaponStpnc
Palaeolithic -with resin
spear-hafted M attke
to wooden ^*A "base
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Palaeolithic Axe Head
HaftedL to -wooden handle -with resin
' <?u.rti .
Handle "bound
with
CELT
Hafted in.
"Wooden. Handle
Palaeolithic Knife
with. Sine VA-"bouru3 art
CELT
Hafted to handle "by
of animals
sinews
Tklaeolithic K"tiif e -with hide handle
TYPES OP WEAPONS USED BY EARLY MAN
[99]
RA MAKES A NEW SPEAR
"How can you take away their fish?" said
the Sun.
"By taking away their lake," replied Mother
Nature, "and for that I shall need Wind
and Rain."
So she called Wind and Rain to her.
"Wind and Rain," she said, "I want you to
blow up a great storm, and turn the little stream
in the valley into a mighty torrent, and when the
torrent is strong enough, it will wash away the
banks that dam up the lake at the lower end of
the valley, and carry the lake, and all the fish in
it, right down through the low country into
the Ocean."
So Wind and Rain made a terrible storm, and
the Lightning flashed, and the Thunder roared,
and all the cave men crept into their holes in the
rocks, afraid. For three days the storm swept
through the valley, tearing down the trees, strip-
ping them of their fruit, and turning the stream
into a raging muddy torrent, that tore along in its
course like a flood.
When the Sun at last shone again, and the cave
men came out of their holes to see what had hap-
[101]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
pened, their lake was gone, and in the foaming
yellow torrent that poured through the valley
there was not a single fish.
Of course there was some food remaining,
fruit, and nuts, and eggs, but with so many to
feed it did not last long, and as the cold rainy
weather came on, the cave men, without any fish
to eat, were soon very hungry. Once more
Mother Nature was about to teach them some-
thing new by means of suffering and pain.
[102]
CHAPTER VIII
MA-RA FINDS A NEW KIND OF FOOD, AND A COAT
OF FUR
^ the grandson of Ra, was out looking
for food. It was the chief thing the cave men
did. When they had plenty, they would lie in
the sun and sleep, but when food was scarce, as it
was now, they spent the whole day, from morning
to night, looking for something to eat.
Ma-Ra went down along the banks of the
stream, hoping to find a fish. It was not so much
of a torrent, now, as it had been during the
storm, but it was still swift and strong, dashing
down over the rocks in the narrow way it had cut
for itself, and boiling up here and there in clouds
of foam. The wide lake at the lower end of the
valley was gone, and there were no longer any
quiet marshy pools along the edge of the stream,
in which fish might live.
The stream poured out of the valley through a
[103]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
narrow gorge, tumbling over the rocks in a foam-
ing waterfall. This was the only entrance to the
valley, except over the rough, forest-covered hills
that surrounded it on all sides, and none of the
cave men, in their hunts for food, had ever gone
outside the valley. They knew nothing of the
country beyond, and were afraid to enter it, not
knowing what sort of enemies they might meet.
Ma-Ra reached the waterfall and stood there
for a long time, his heavy spear in his hand. All
he could see through the gorge was a wide marshy
plain, covered with tall rank grass, with here
and there a clump of fern-like bushes and trees.
He wondered if there were any food to be found
in the plain, for he had had nothing to eat since the
afternoon before, and he was very hungry. He
knew it would be useless to go back to the caves,
for he would find no food on the way, and when he
got back, there would be nothing there either, ex-
cept a few of the dry roots of plants on which
the cave people were trying to keep themselves
alive. Ma-Ra felt a spirit of adventure stirring
within him ; why, he said to himself, should he not
go outside the valley and see what he could find ?
104]
MA-RA FINDS NEW KIND OF FOOD
He might as well be killed by some wild beast,
as starve to death. So he decided to go.
Picking his way carefully over the slippery
rocks beside the waterfall, he finally got to the
bottom of it, and found himself on the edge of
the wide, marshy plain. There were many hum-
mocks of grass, with muddy pools between, but
although he searched very carefully, in none of
them could he find any fish.
As he walked along through the tall grass,
higher than his waist, he saw many large birds
fly over his head, lighting here and there to feed
on the tender shoots of the grass, but while he
knew these birds might be good to eat, there was
no way in which he could catch one of them.
Suddenly Ma-Ra paused, the hair on his neck
and head standing up straight. Some animal
was coming toward him through the grass; he
saw the grass tops waving, and heard low grunts,
as the creature forced its way along through the
mud. What it was Ma-Ra could not tell, but he
stood quite still, a little to one side of the path the
animal was taking, and waited, spear in hand.
In a few moments he saw a heavy pointed
[105]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
snout come poking through the grass, with little
sharp tusks sticking upward, and small bright
eyes, which turned quickly from side to side,
watching for any danger. Suddenly the animal
saw Ma-Ra and stopped. It had never seen a
man before, and did not know what to make
of him.
Ma-Ra was very quick. Without waiting a
moment, he drove his flint-pointed spear into
the animal's side, just behind its fore-leg.
The wild pig tried his best to use his sharp
tusks, but it was too late. Ma-Ra's thrust had
been a fatal one, and in a few moments the boar
fell over on his side, dead.
Ma-Ra drew out his spear. Some bits of the
animal's flesh, warm and covered with blood,
clung to his spear point. Half starving, he put
them in his mouth, chewed them, swallowed them.
They tasted good to him, even better, he thought,
than raw fish. With the blade of his spear he
cut some strips of flesh from the animal's side and
made a hearty meal. Then, because the body of
the boar was too large and heavy for him to
carry, he twisted some marsh grasses together,
[106]
MA-RA FINDS NEW KIND OF FOOD
tied them to the animal's front legs, and began
to drag it along through the marsh toward the
entrance to the valley.
When he at last came to the waterfall, he was
tired, and he saw at once that he would not be
able to carry the body of the boar over the steep,
slippery rocks that led into the valley. So he
sat down to think what he should do, and mean-
while, ate some more of the boar meat. Soon he
heard a cry from the rocks above, and saw two
of his brothers standing in the valley entrance,
looking down at him in surprise.
He called to them to join him, which they did,
chattering loudly over his bravery in going out-
side the valley. They too were very hungry, so
Ma-Ra showed them the boar he had killed, and
gave them some of the meat to eat. They liked
it, as he had, and soon their stomachs too were
full. Then the three of them carried the body of
the boar up over the steep rocks beside the water-
fall, and took it home to the caves, very proud of
what they had done.
That night Ma-Ra's family had a big feast,
and Ha patted his grandson on the back and said
[107]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
a word or two which meant, in their simple lan-
guage, that he had done well. The next day
several parties of the cave men went out to hunt
for the new sort of food. They found many dif-
ferent kinds of animals, in the marsh, and on the
hillsides around the valley, and they ate them,
and soon got to like the flesh of animals better
even than they had liked the raw fish.
That winter the tribe did not go hungry, and
the new food they had found, as well as the dan-
ger of hunting for it, made them bolder and
fiercer than ever. There were scarcely any ani-
mals that they were afraid of now, except the
great mammoth elephants, which we call masto-
dons, and the huge hairy rhinoceros, which
sometimes attacked them in the marsh, and the
terrible sabre-toothed tigers.
Food was not the only thing the cave people
got from the bodies of the animals they killed.
For one thing, they found a way to use the skins.
At first, finding them tough and not fit to eat,
they threw them away, but Mother Nature did
not like this. She wanted her children to learn
to use the furry skins of the animals they killed.
[108]
MA-RA FINDS NEW KIND OF FOOD
So, one day, when Ma-Ra and some of his friends
were stripping the skin from an animal they had
speared, in the marsh land, she called Cold and
Rain to her and told them to make Ma-Ra and
his companions just as uncomfortable as they
could.
Cold and Rain laughed when they heard this,
for they loved to make the funny little creatures
dance, so they poured down such a bitter cold
rain that Ma-Ra and the others were chilled
to the bone.
Ma-Ra, his teeth chattering from the cold,
looked at the skin he had just stripped from a
small bear. The skin was still warm, and with-
out thinking he wrapped it about his head and
shoulders to keep off the cold rain. His friends
did not understand what he was about, at first,
but soon they saw that Ma-Ra was warm, while
they were not, and they tried to take the skin
away from him, but he would not give it up.
When the rain was over, and the party had
returned to the valley, Ma-Ra took the skin of
the bear with him and hung it up on the wall of
the cave.
[109]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
The next day, when he went to get it, he was
very much disappointed to find that it had dried
hard and stiff as a board, and seemed no longer
of any use to him.
Now Ma-Ra had begun to think quite a good
deal, and he remembered that when the skin was
soft, the day before, it had been moist, so he took
it down to the bank of the stream and washed it
over and over in the water, scrubbing it with
sand, and pounding it between two round stones,
until it had become quite soft again. Then he
put it in the sun to dry.
Again it dried stiff and hard, and Ma-Ra was
about to throw it away. Then he remembered
how the grease and fat of the animals he killed
softened the rough hard skin of his hands, so he
got a lump of grease and rubbed the bear skin
over and over with it, working the grease into all
the pores. This time, the skin stayed soft, and
Ma-Ra, although he did not know it, was the first
Man to make leather.
He threw the heavy piece of fur about his
shoulders, and fastened it with a sharp thorn, and
walked about very proud of his new fur cloak.
[110]
THE BEAR SKIN
Ma-Ra threw the heavy piece of fur about his shoulders, and
fastened it with a sharp thorn, and walked about very proud
of his new fur cloak.
[in]
MA-RA FINDS NEW KIND OF FOOD
After that, the cave people did not call him
Ma-Ra any longer, but Han, which in their lan-
guage meant the skin of an animal.
Other very useful things, too, the cave people
found in the bodies of the animals they killed.
Some of the bones, after they had cracked them
open and eaten the marrow, they used for knives,
or for spear points, and the women made coarse
needles from them, with which they later on
sewed together pieces of skins for belts, to hold
the men's clubs and knives when hunting.
Sinews, drawn from the animals' muscles, gave
them strong cords or thread, and after a time they
made sandals, or moccasins, out of the tough
hides, to protect their feet when running over
the sharp stones. The teeth they often strung on
bits of sinew and hung around their necks, to
show what great hunters they were.
As the centuries went by, they once more found,
in the marshes below the valley, fish which had
made their way up from the Ocean, and from the
bones of these they made smaller and sharper
needles, for sewing the leather they had begun to
use. Strips of this leather, called thongs, or the
[113]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
twisted entrails of animals, called gut, took the
place of the cords mad^ of marsh grasses, for
binding on the heads of spears, or axes, and as
the cave men took to wearing skins and furs, they
began to, lose the hair on their bodies, and they
looked less and less like animals, and more and
more like human beings.
Besides getting their food by hunting, the cave
people soon learned many ways of trapping ani-
mals and other game. In the case of the larger
beasts they sometimes made traps by digging
deep holes or pits in the ground and then fixing
upright in the bottom of these pits many strong,
sharp stakes, with keen points. Over the pits
they would lay a thin covering of branches and
leaves. These traps were placed in the paths the
animals usually took when going to the streams
and ponds to get water. When the heavy beast
walked on the thin covering of the pit, it would
give way, and he would fall on the sharp stakes,
and either be killed, or wounded so that the
hunters could make short work of him with
their spears.
Smaller animals and birds they trapped by
[114]
MA-RA FINDS NEW KIND OF FOOD
snares of different sorts. One kind they made by
bending down a stout sapling until it almost
touched the ground, and hooking the end of it
under a notched stake driven in the earth. On
the end of the sapling was a noose of cord, or gut.
This noose they spread in a circle around the
notched stake. On the stake they tied a bit of
food, for bait. When the animal tried to pull the
food off the stake, the bent sapling would slip
out of the notch and fly upward, and the animal
or bird would be caught in the noose.
In many such ways the cave men got food
for themselves and their families.
The Sun was very much surprised to see how
quickly the cave men had begun to learn.
"They are smarter than any of the other ani-
mals on Earth," he said.
"Yes," said Mother Nature. "They are
smarter, because they have begun to use their
brains, to think, just as I told you they would.
But they have really only just started. If you
watch them carefully, you will see many surpris-
ing things, in the next two or three thou-
sand years."
[115]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
"They seem very cold," said the Sun, "even
with their caves, and their fur coats. I have a
hard time to keep them warm, in the Winter."
"I will attend to that," Mother Nature told
him. "I am about to send them a very wonder-
ful thing."
"What is it?" the Sun asked.
"Fire," Mother Nature replied. 'Soon they
will be making Heat work for them."
[116]
CHAPTER IX
THE COMING OF FIRE
WHEN Mother Nature got ready to send Fire
to the cave men, she called Heat and Cold and
Wind and Rain to her and explained what she
wanted them to do.
"My little people down there," she said, "need
something to keep them warm, during the Win-
ter, and also they need something to cook their
food with, and later on to help them make pot-
tery, and smelt metals, and do all the wonderful
new things I am going to teach them to do.
Without Fire, they can never be anything but
savages, the way they are now. So we must send
them Fire."
: 'Fire," said Cold, puffing out a great cloud of
frost. "I have no Fire to give them."
"Nor I," said Wind and Rain.
"I have plenty of Fire, inside the Earth," said
Heat. "Do you want me to burst out in a blazing
[117]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
volcano ? I am afraid it might burn them all up."
"No, Heat," said Mother Nature. "We do
not need any volcanoes just now. But you have
another way to give them Fire. Have you for-
gotten Lightning?"
"I see," said Heat. "Lightning is certainly
very hot. What do you want me to do?"
: 'The trees and grass in the valley," Mother
Nature replied, "are brown and dry from the
Sun. Cold and Wind and Rain, I want you to
send a thunder storm to the valley, and set the
forest afire with a bolt of Lightning. Then,
Heat, you can blaze away all you like, until I
tell Rain to put you out again."
So Heat, dancing down the rays of the Sun,
turned the water at the surface of the Ocean into
vapour, like steam, and it rose high in the air and
formed clouds. Then Wind drove the clouds
over the valley, and Cold blew on them, and
turned the vapour of the clouds back to water
again, so that it fell as Rain. Now each little bit
of vapour in the clouds carried with it a tiny
spark of Electricity, for the Air about the Earth
is always filled with Electricity, carried by tiny
[118]
THE FIRST FIRE
The storm rolled down over the valley, and at last a great
flash of Lightning struck a dry tree and set it on fire.
[119]
THE COMING OF FIRE
drops of moisture. When all the little sparks got
together in the thick black clouds, they formed
big sparks, and when the clouds got so full of
Electricity they couldn't hold any more, these
big sparks jumped from the clouds down to the
Earth, in great flashes, sometimes half a mile
long. You can make a little spark like that, if
you walk quickly over a soft rug, on a dry winter
day, and then put your knuckle to the metal
radiator. It will be a real Lightning flash, al-
though it will be only half an inch long, and the
little crackling sound you hear, as the spark
jumps from your knuckle to the radiator, is real
thunder, but because the flash is so small, your
thunder will not be very loud.
So the storm rolled down over the valley, and
the Lightning flashed, and the Thunder roared,
and all the cave people ran into their holes and
huddled together, shivering. They had seen the
Lightning and heard the Thunder before, but
because they did not know what they were, they
thought some terrible dragon, with a roaring voice
and a tongue of flame was coming to eat them up.
At last a great flash of Lightning struck a dry
[121]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
tree and set it on fire, and the Wind blew the
clouds away for a while, so that the Rain might
not put the fire out.
"I'll show them something," said Heat, as the
tree and the bushes about it began to crackle
and blaze.
As soon as Wind blew the storm away, the
cave people, not hearing the Thunder any more,
came out to see what was going on. When they
saw the blazing tree, they were at first very much
frightened, for they had never seen Fire so close
at hand before. So they chattered and pointed,
afraid to go near it.
After a while, when they saw that the fire did
them no harm, they went closer, and gathered
about the roaring flames, watching them as they
devoured the dry leaves and branches.
Then Mother Nature told Wind to blow the
flames gently toward the cave people, and the
heat from the flames warmed them, and they
liked it. So they came nearer, and at last a boy
picked up a blazing branch that fell near him, be-
cause it was red and pretty. But he dropped it
again very quickly, you may be sure, and ran
[122]
THE COMING OF FIRE
howling with pain to his mother, his burnt fingers
in his mouth.
"I am sorry," laughed Heat, dancing among
the flames, "but I had to let you see that I can
burn as well as warm you. So you had better
treat me with care."
Soon the flames spread, and other trees took
fire, and the flames roared and danced down the
valley like mad, their red tongues licking up
everything that came in their way.
Some of the older cave men went to the place
where the fire had first started and gathered
about the hot coals, enjoying the warmth. But
soon they saw that the fire was dying out, so
they began to throw leaves and twigs and
branches on it, and every time it blazed up they
shouted with joy.
When Mother Nature saw that the cave people
liked the new thing she had sent them, she told
Wind to blow the storm back again, so that Rain
might fall on the blazing forest, and put out the
flames before the trees were all burned up.
"But do not wet the little fire the cave people
have kept burning among the rocks," she said,
[123]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
"for if you do, they will not be able to light it
again. And I wish, Cold, that you would blow
with all your might."
The cave people, gathered about the fire, felt
the cold wind on their backs, and because the
fire kept them warm, they liked it, and put more
and more wood on it to keep it alive. Whenever
it died down, and they felt cold again, they
brought more branches and twigs. After a time,
night came, and the bright yellow flames pleased
them so much that they danced about the fire,
chattering with delight.
Presently they grew sleepy, and lay down be-
side the fire, because it was warmer there, than it
was inside the caves. And they went to sleep and
forgot all about the fire, so that, when morning
came, they woke up, chilled by the cold, to find
that their fire was gone.
This made them feel very sad. Then one of
the younger men, who was called Ab, because he
was slow and lazy, like a bear, was very angry
because the fire had gone out and left him cold,
so he began to poke about among the ashes with
a stick, and after a while, away down at the bot-
[124]
THE COMING OF FIRE
torn of the pile, he found a bed of glowing red
coals. He got some leaves and twigs and put
them on the coals, and when the fire blazed up
again, the cave people all shout Ai-Ai, and that
became in time their word for fire. They called
Ab Ai-Ab after that, because he was the one who
had brought back the fire.
Mother Nature, who was watching the cave
people, was glad when she saw that they had
saved the fire, for she was afraid she might have
to make it all over again for them. But she was
not satisfied.
'The Rain will soon put it out," she said to the
Sun, "if they do not carry it into their caves. I
must teach them a lesson. But first, they must
find out more about what Fire can do for them,
so you had better keep on shining for a
while."
The cave people, when they saw that the fire
was burning again, left Ai-Ab and the women to
keep it blazing, while they went out to hunt
for food. They did not know, then, all the won-
derful things Fire was going to do for them,
but they liked it because it kept them warm.
[125]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
There were two boys in one of the parties that
went down the valley. One was called Tul, which
meant quick, and the other was called Ni-Va,
which meant fish, and they called him that be-
cause he was a very good swimmer. Tul and
Ni-Va were not allowed to go outside the valley
with the older men, but were told to search
through the woods for the sweet roots of certain
kinds of plants that the cave men ate, and for
eggs, and the young wild birds.
When Tul and Ni-Va came to the edge of the
forest, they saw a great wide space which had
been burned by the fire before the rain had
put it out. So, being curious, they forgot all
about the roots and eggs they had been sent
after, and went poking about among the ashes
and charred trunks of trees, to see what they
could find.
They had been doing this for quite a while,
when Ni-Va heard Tul call to him, and ran up to
see what his companion had found.
There among some burnt bushes lay the body
of a great bird, as large as a turkey. It had been
sitting on its nest on the ground, and in trying to
[126]
THE FIRST COOK
Ai-Ab took a large piece of the deer meat, and putting it on
the end of a stick, held it over the flames of the fire.
[127]
THE COMING OF FIRE
escape it had become entangled among some
thick vines. The fire had burnt away the feathers
of the bird, and left it scorched and black, and
still a little warm from the bed of ashes in which
it lay.
Tul tried to lift the bird by one of its legs, but
to his surprise, the leg came right off in his hand,
for the body of the bird had been cooked by the
fierce heat.
Tul looked at the leg, smelt it, and then being
hungry, began to eat. It was the first time that
he or any other man had ever eaten cooked food,
and the taste of it pleased him, so he told Ni-Va
to eat the other leg. This Ni-Va did, and he too
liked it very much, because it was much more
tender than raw meat, and had a better taste.
They took the body of the bird home and gave it
to Ai-Ab, who was sitting beside the fire.
Ai-Ab, who was also hungry, smelt the cooked
food, and when the boys showed him how they
t/
had eaten the legs, he tore off a great piece of
the breast and devoured it. The rest he gave to
some of the women.
Now Ai-Ab, although he was slow and lazy,
[129]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
was also very smart. When he tasted the cooked
meat, and saw how good it was, an idea came to
him. He did not say anything to the two boys
about it, but when the men qame home from
hunting, bringing with them the bodies of two
young deer, Ai-Ab took a large piece of the deer
meat, and putting it on the end of a stick, held it
over the flames of the fire.
The other men crowded about, laughing, be-
cause they thought Ai-Ab had gone mad and was
burning up his dinner. But when the smell of the
cooking meat came to them, they liked it, and
stopped laughing. Soon Ai-Ab drew the hot
crisp meat from the flames and began to eat it,
and then they all wanted to taste it, but Ai-Ab
told them if they wanted any to cook it for them-
selves. Some of the others followed his example,
holding the bits of meat over the fire on the points
of their spears, and it was not long before the
whole tribe took to cooking their food instead of
eating it raw. They kept the fire burning day
and night, and Ai-Ab watched it, and kept it
going, and he was the very first cook among
Men.
[130]
THE COMING OF FIRE
"They have found that Fire is very useful to
them," said Mother Nature, "for it not only
keeps them warm, but it cooks their food. I must
teach them to take better care of it." So she told
Rain to sprinkle the fire a little, but not to put
it quite out.
When the cave men saw that the rain was put-
ting out their fire, they were very angry, for they
did not want to lose it, but although they piled on
more and more wood, the flames sank lower and
lower, and at last the fire was nearly out.
Then Ai-Ab, who was the keeper of the fire,
and had shown himself so smart, took a burning
stick from the bottom of the pile, and ran with it
into the cave where he and his people lived. It
was a large cave, because Ai-Ab's father was one
of the head men of the tribe, and had several
wives and a great many children.
Ai-Ab took the burning stick into the cave and
dropped it in the middle of the floor. Then he
gathered some dry grass and leaves from the beds
on which he and the others slept, and threw them
on the coals. The fire blazed up at once, and his
brothers and sisters ran out and got armfuls of
[131]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
twigs and branches, and although the twigs were
wet, they finally began to burn.
When the other cave men saw what Ai-Ab
had done, they made fires in their caves, as well,
and if one went out, they would borrow some hot
coals from a neighbour. Once, however, during
the rainy season, when all the wood was wet, they
came very near losing their precious fire, so after
that, the head man of the tribe told two old men,
who were not strong enough to go out after food,
to watch the fire and keep it going in a cave by
themselves, which they filled with dry wood, and
while one watched, the other slept, and in this
way the fire never went out. The Fire seemed
something sacred to them, and after a time, they
got into a way of coming to the cave and saying
prayers or making wishes to it, and thought of it
as a sort of god. And in worshipping Fire,
or the Sun, or any of the other great forces that
helped them, the cave men, although they did not
know it, were really worshipping God, who made
all these things for their use.
[132]
CHAPTER X
THE FIKST BOAT
TUL the Swift, and Ni-Va the Fish, were al-
ways together.
It made them angry not to be allowed to leave
the valley with the hunting men, so they planned
in secret to make a trip by themselves. The
weather was warm, now, for the spring had come,
and they talked a great deal about the country
outside the valley, where they had never been,
and planned to see it.
Tul had a fine spear he had made, with a long
sharp lizard's tooth for a point. He had found
the tooth among some bones in the lower end of
the valley, where the lake had once been, and was
very proud of it. Ni-Va's spear was tipped with
bone, for spearing fish. He had never killed one
yet, but he wanted to very much, for he heard the
older men talking about it, when they came back
from the great marsh. He also carried a small
[133]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
stone-bladed axe, while Tul took a flint knife,
such as the men used for skinning animals. Both
had leather sandals, and belts from which the hair
had been scraped with sharp stones.
They took no food with them when they went,
and they did not tell any one that they were going,
but one morning, very early, they crept out of
the cave, before the sun was up, and made their
way down the banks of the stream toward the
lower end of the valley.
When they came to the waterfall, they climbed
down over the path of rocks worn smooth by the
feet of many hunting parties, and soon found
themselves on the wide marshy plain which
stretched out as far as their eyes could reach.
The river, after it emptied into the plain,
spread out into many small winding streams, and
that was what made the great marsh they saw be-
fore them. Off to the right, however, they found
that the ground was higher, so instead of follow-
ing the paths through the marsh which the hunt-
ing parties usually took, the two boys circled off
toward the higher ground, as the walking was
easier that way.
[134]
THE FIRST BOAT
The ground was hard, and full of flat stones,
between which the coarse grasses were springing
up covering the Earth with a fresh coat of green.
Tul and Ni- Va travelled all day, without seeing
much to interest them. The path led downward
hour after hour, toward the lower country, and
they soon left the marsh far behind them. Great
flocks of water fowl flew overhead, going to and
fro from the marsh; they threw stones at
them, but did not hit any. There were few trees
or bushes on the hillside, and the ground was
stony and rough, with scarcely any animals about.
Once some strange creatures like deer, without
any horns, ran near them, and in the distance
they saw some giant forms that looked like the
mammoths they had heard the hunters speak
about, but nothing that they could use for food
came within their reach.
When night fell they were both hungry, and
cold, without any fire, and as they lay alone on
the bare ground, trying to sleep, they felt a little
afraid, for they knew that there were many ani-
mals in the country about the great marsh that
would gladly eat them up.
[135]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Morning came at last, and found them not only
hungry, but very thirsty as well. Far off, at the
foot of the hillside, they saw what looked like a
line of trees.
It was after midday when they reached it, and
found themselves on the banks of a wide river,
flowing through a forest of tall bushes and
trees.
It was much warmer here than it had been in
the valley, for they had been travelling steadily
downhill for nearly two days, and had reached
the low country. There were many more living
things about than there had been on the bare hill-
side, birds, and animals of various sorts that
slipped noiselessly through the thick vines and
bushes along the banks of the river.
The two boys threw themselves down at the
edge of the stream and drank until their thirst
was quenched. Then Ni-Va, with his bone-
pointed spear, waded about along the shore and
soon brought up a fine big fish. They ate it for
breakfast, although they would have liked it bet-
ter, if they had had a fire, in which to cook it, for
they had come to like cooked food better than
[136]
THE FIRST VOYAGE
The two boys sprang upon the log which floated slowly out
into the stream.
A DUG-OUT CANOE OF EARLY MAN
Made by hollowing out the trunk of an oak tree.
[137]
THE FIRST BOAT .
raw, now. After breakfast, they talked about
what they should do.
Ni-Va, the swimmer, wanted to swim across
the river and see what the country was like on the
other side, but Tul could not swim, and when
they saw the dark backs of some great reptiles,
like crocodiles, cutting the surface of the water,
they soon gave up the idea.
They were sitting on the bank, wondering
whether they had not better go back, when Tul
saw a log, the broken trunk of a tree, floating
slowly down the stream, close to the shore.
Climbing out on a low limb which hung over the
water, he hooked the point of his spear into a
broken branch on the log, and gently towed it up
to the bank.
Ni-Va, when he saw what Tul had done, chat-
tered with delight, and sprang upon the log. In
a moment, Tul had joined him, pushing the log
away from the shore with his spear. It floated
slowly out into the stream, carried along by the
current, and Tul and Ni-Va found themselves
upon Man's first boat.
The two boys thought that they would be car-
[139]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
ried across the river on the log, but as soon as
their clumsy craft drifted to the middle of the
stream, the current caught it with full force, and
began to sweep it at a great rate down the river.
Tul, with his spear, tried to guide their boat by
pushing against the bottom, but the water was
far too deep for him to reach it and in his efforts
he very nearly fell off the log. They knew noth-
ing about paddling, even if they had had any-
thing to paddle with, so they could only cling to
the log and trust to some change in the current,
to carry them to shore. To their dismay, how-
ever, they saw that the river was rapidly growing
wider, and the banks getting further and fur-
ther away.
Hour after hour the log boat swept along in
the swift current, and by the time the sun was
ready to set, the river was so wide that they
could hardly see the shore. There were no longer
any thick woods, and all they could see were low
sandy banks, with here and there clumps of
bushes and tall grass. Suddenly the log, which
had been drifting in a long curve around a point,
came to a stop on a sand bar. Ni-Va slipped
[140]
THE FIRST BOAT
overboard, ready to swim, with Tul holding on to
his shoulder, but to his surprise he found that the
water came only up to his waist. Tul quickly
joined him, and leaving their clumsy craft the
two boys waded ashore.
When they reached the sandy bank, and
climbed up on it, a wonderful sight met their
eyes. As far as they could see, before them and
to either side, stretched a great shining body of
water. They had never supposed there was so
much water in the world, and the sight of it for a
moment frightened them. The vast sheet of
water before them was the Ocean, and they were
the very first Men in all the world to see it.
The bank on which they stood sloped down to a
beach of shining white sand. The two boys
crossed it eagerly, watching with wide eyes the
great foaming breakers as they tumbled up on
the shore. Tul, who was very thirsty, ran down
to the edge of the water and scooping up a hand-
ful, tried to drink it. It was salt and bitter, how-
ever, and he quickly spat it out again.
Hungry and thirsty, the two adventurers sat
on the sand and wondered what they could find
[141]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
to eat and drink. There might be fish, in this
great wide water, but if there were, they soon saw
that they could not get near enough to spear
them, on account of the huge breakers. Pres-
ently Ni-Va, who had been idly digging in the
wet sand with his fingers, brought up a round
object that looked something like a nut. With
the aid of two pebbles he cracked it open, and
being very hungry, ate the soft meat he found
inside. It tasted very good, and soon he and Tul
had dug a large pile of the shell-fish, and made a
hearty meal. The soft moist clams not only satis-
fied their hunger, but quenched their thirst a
little, and as there was nothing else to eat, and
the night was coming on, the two wanderers
stretched themselves on the warm sand and soon
fell asleep.
The rising sun waked them, and springing up,
they looked eagerly about. Near them, on the
beach, they saw a huge turtle, lying in the sun.
The boys had seen turtles before, since the hunt-
ing men sometimes brought them home from the
marshes, but they were small compared to this
great animal. Creeping up to it in some fear,
[142]
THE FIRST BOAT
Tul and his companion managed to turn it over
on its back with their spears, after which they
killed it and made their breakfast of some of the
meat. There was enough to have lasted for a
week, but the boys soon saw that they could not
stay where they were much longer without water.
They could not understand why the water in the
Ocean was so bitter and salt, and they went back
to the place where they had left the log, hoping
that the river water might be different. They
soon found that it, too, was salt and the little they
drank of it only made them more thirsty than
before. There was nothing to do but get back to
the forest country as quickly as possible, where
they might find some juicy berries or fruits to
quench their thirst.
Before they started Ni-Va tied some chunks of
the turtle meat to his girdle with leather thongs,
and Tul took a handful of the shells of the clams
they had eaten and twisting some coarse grass
about them, slung them around his neck. Then
they went back to the log.
They thought, at first, that the current which
had carried them down the stream would carry
[143]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
them back, but as soon as they had managed to
push the log off the sand bar, it set out quickly
for the sea, and they scrambled off it at once
and waded back to the shore.
The only thing to do was to go back along the
river bank to the place from which they had
started, so they set out. At first the way was
easy, with smooth banks of sand to walk on, but
after a time they came to the forest, and found it
very hard indeed to make their way through the
bushes and trailing vines. When night came,
they were tired out, and afraid, too, because they
heard the cries and grunts of many animals in
the dense woods all about them. Without know-
ing why, the two boys did as their ancestors had
done, and climbing into the forks of a great tree,
spent the night safe from harm. In the morning
they resumed their journey, and this time, when
they tried the water of the river, they found that
it was only a little salt, and they were able to
drink it and quench their thirst.
When the middle of the afternoon arrived,
they saw the hills from which they had come
rising against the sky to their left, and leaving
[144]
THE FIRST BOAT
the banks of the river they set out toward the
higher country.
Several times they thought they had lost their
way, but they kept on, and at last saw the surface
of the great marsh stretching out before them.
From here on, they had no trouble, and on the
second night they reached the entrance to the
valley. They were very tired, and hungry too,
for the turtle meat they had brought along was
all eaten up, but Ni-Va managed to spear some
small fish along the edge of the marsh, so that
their stomachs were not quite empty when they
finally got home.
When they told their friends in the valley
about the great water they had seen, stretching as
far as their eyes could reach, the others would not
believe them, and even the shells they had
brought back did not convince the cave people
that there could be a stream or river as big as
that. Tul and Ni-Va offered to guide a party to
the Ocean and show them, but the others only
laughed, and thought the boys were not telling
the truth. They were quite satisfied, in the val-
ley, they said, and did not care to go to a place
[145]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
where the water was not fit to drink, and there
was no fire, and no caves in which to sleep. But
Tul and Ni-Va made up their minds that some
day they would go back to the great water, and
see it again.
The two boys were never tired of telling about
their adventures, and were very proud of the
necklaces they made of the shells Tul had
brought back with him. They tried to make a log
boat, like the one they had used to float down the
great river, and because they could not find a log
on the banks of the stream big enough to hold
them, they got several smaller logs, and fastened
them together with twisted ropes of grass, and in
this way made a raft, and had great fun with it,
riding down the swift-flowing stream that ran
through the valley.
The Sun, who was watching them, laughed.
"Your little Men will never conquer the Ocean
on a thing like that," he said, looking at the
clumsy raft.
"Wait," said Mother Nature. "They will sur-
prise you. That log, drifting in the river, was
their first boat, and that raft, which is a little bet-
[146]
THE FIRST BOAT
ter, is their second. Some day, my children will
take a log, and burn it out with fire, and make a
canoe. And others will make strong frame-
works of wood, or the bones of the whale, or
twisted reeds, and cover these frameworks with
the bark of trees, or skins, or pitch that they will
find in the earth, and make canoes, and kyaks,
and coracles. And later on, they will cover the
frames of their boats with planks of wood, and
put sails on them, and make ships that will carry
them to the ends of the Earth. And they will
even make ships of iron, and put great engines
in them, and laugh at the storms of the Ocean,
and conquer them, because they have brains with
which to understand my laws."
"It sounds like a fairy tale," said the Sun.
"It is," said Mother Nature. "The most won-
derful fairy tale in the world, because it is true."
[147]
CHAPTER XI
TOR-AD THE POTTER
ToR-Ao lived many hundreds of years after
Tul and Ni-Va made the first boat. He was not
called Tor-Ad at first, but just Tor, which in the
language of the cave people meant a Turtle.
They called him this because he was very slow
and lazy, and liked to lie half asleep in the sun
while the other boys made spears, or practised
throwing them at a mark, to make themselves
more skilful in hunting.
Tor did not care for throwing spears. He pre-
ferred to sit among the rocks and dream. Some-
times he would sit still for hours, scratching little
lines on the flat stones with a sharp piece of flint.
"Long before that, some of the hunters, in
making handles for their knives out of bone, or
wood, had carved these handles into rude shapes,
that looked something like an animal, or a man,
but Tor had never seen any drawings, because
[148]
THE FIRST ARTIST
Tor made large drawings on the walls of the caves that
looked like bears, and mammoths, and wild boars.
[149]
TOR-AD THE POTTER
none had been made. Sometimes he would find
a flat piece of rock with weather marks, or cracks
on it that reminded him of things he had seen
fish, or the heads of bears, or men. He would
look at these for a long time, and try to copy
them with his sharp bit of flint, but it was very
hard for him to make anything that looked like
the objects he saw about him.
Still, Tor kept on trying, while the other boys
laughed at him, because he would not go with
them to swim, or hunt, or look for fish in the shal-
low pools at the head of the great marsh, but Tor
did not mind, for he was happy scratching on his
rocks in the sun.
One day, after many trials, he at last drew
something on a flat stone that looked a little like
a fish, and he ran to the cave with it and showed
it to his father. Tor's father, instead of being
pleased, was angry with him, and told him he had
better go with the other boys and learn to spear
fish, and not waste his time trying to make pic-
tures of them. Tor's mother, however, liked the
little drawing, and kept it in the cave.
As Tor grew older he learned to draw many
[151]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
things with his sharp piece of flint figures of
animals and birds, and some of them were so good
that his friends could tell what they were, and
got him to scratch others for them on bits of bone,
or the handles of their knives. He made larger
drawings, too, on the walls of the caves, that
looked like bears, and mammoths, and wild boars.
After a time, he found a bed of smooth red
and yellow clay along the river bank, and used it,
and the juice of berries, to colour the figures he
drew upon the cave walls. Some of these
coloured drawings we find even to-day, on the
walls of caves in France and other countries, and
protected as they have been from the wind and
rain, the colours of these early crude pictures are
as bright and clear as when they were first made,
fifty thousand years ago.
One day, while playing with some of the clay
he had found along the river bank, Tor began to
roll a lump of it between his fingers, pleased be-
cause it was so smooth and easy to shape. At
first he made only round balls, rolling them under
his hand on the top of a flat stone, but presently
he found that he could press a hollow in the lumps
[152]
TOR-AD THE POTTER
of soft clay, making something that looked like
the cup-shaped shells of the large nuts which the
tribe used for carrying water. Very carefully
Tor smoothed and patted his lump of clay until
he had formed a little round bowl, thick and
clumsy, but still large enough to hold several
drinks of water. The thought that he had made
something new pleased him, and he took it home
with him and put it on a ledge of rock in the cave.
Then he forgot all about it.
When his mother found it, in the morning, it
was quite hard and dry. She did not know what
it was, at first, but Tor told her how he had made
it from the river clay, and she was so pleased that
she took it down to the stream with her, and
showed it to some of the other women, who had
come to fetch drinking water in bowls made of
the shells of large nuts. But when Tor's mother
came back to the cave with the clay bowl full of
drinking water, it got soft and began to lose its
shape, which made the other women laugh at her,
and at Tor, for trying to make a drinking cup out
of mud. Then Tor's mother became angry, and
threw the bowl into the fire which she had made
[153]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
before the cave, to cook fish for breakfast. And
Tor she sent away to the hills about the valley, to
gather eggs from the nests of the wild fowl which
lived there.
Tor felt very badly at the loss of his little bowl,
and when he got back to the caves that night, and
his mother was busy with the eggs he had
brought, he took a stick and began to poke about
in the hot ashes of the fire, hoping to find the
bowl again.
At last he discovered it, among the coals at
the bottom of the fire, and dragged it out with the
stick, for it was too hot to touch with his hand.
When it got cool, he took it up. A piece had
been broken from one side of it, when his mother
threw it down, but otherwise it was not much
hurt. Tor was surprised to find, when he had
brushed the ashes from it, that while before it had
been yellow, it had now turned a bright red.
This pleased him, although he did not under-
stand it, so he took the bowl down to the river-
bank, and put it in the wate-r, thinking to soften
the clay by wetting it, as he had often done be-
fore, and then mould it over again into some-
[154]
THE FIRST POTTER
He worked all night, heating in the fire the clay bowl he
had made.
[155]
TOR-AD THE POTTER
thing else. To his surprise, the water would not
soften the clay, but it did wash it clean, and made
it seem redder and prettier than ever. Then he
struck it against a stone, and at once it broke into
many sharp pieces, just as a flower-pot would be
shivered to bits, if you were to strike it against
something hard.
All this puzzled Tor for a long time, but he
decided at last that the heat of the fire had dried
and burned his clay and changed it so that it
became hard and red. He made up his mind to
make another bowl for his mother, and this time
to burn it in the fire first, before he gave it to her.
Very early the next day he got another lump of
clay, and made a larger bowl, taking great care
this time to shape it carefully, so that it was round
and smooth. Then he drew the picture of a turtle
on one side, to mark it with his name, and a fish
on the other, and hid it away among the rocks
until he should have time to make a fire and
burn it.
That night, when every one was asleep, he
took some hot coals from the fire before the cave,
and carrying these coals in the clay bowl, he made
[157]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
a new fire at a hiding place he knew of among the
rocks. All night he sat beside the fire, watching
it, heaping on fresh wood to keep it blazing hot.
In the morning, very sleepy and tired, he took
the bowl out of the fire with a crooked stick,
cooled, washed and dried it, and filling it with
water, carried it proudly to his mother.
At first she would have nothing to do with it,
because the first one had been such a failure, but
after awhile, when she saw that the water did not
soften it, and that it had such a pretty red colour,
she was very much pleased, and called Tor's
father and some of the others to come and
look at it.
They did not see much use in it at first, since
the nut shells they used for carrying water they
thought quite good enough. They did, however,
like the pretty red colour of the pottery, and
Tor's mother was so proud of the bowl that she
kept it in the cave, and would not let any one
drink out of it but herself.
Soon Tor found that he could make much
larger bowls and jars out of the smooth soft clay,
and after a time, the cave people used these jars
[158]
TOR-AD THE POTTER
for storing nuts, or roots, or berries, when they
had more than they needed at the moment. But
still the thought had not occurred to them to store
away food for use during the winter. Even in
the coldest weather, they were able to kill ani-
mals, and fish, and they supposed they would
always be able to do so.
Tor also made queer little figures, out of the
clay, and red beads, with holes through them,
which the women strung on bits of leather, or
sinew, and used for ornaments, about their necks.
And because in their simple language, Ad was
the word for earth, or clay, they began to call the
clay worker Tor- Ad, instead of just Tor.
It took the cave dwellers many many hundreds
of years to learn how to ornament the bowls and
jars they made with pictures and patterns in
colours, and a much longer time, to find out a
way of making them smooth and round by whirl-
ing them about on a flat wheel and pressing their
fingers, or a wooden tool, against them as they
turned. We must remember that the minds of
the first men grew very slowly, and it often took
them a very long time to think out what seem to
[159]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
us very simple ideas indeed. Even now, although
many thousands of years had passed, since the
days of Adh, they knew nothing at all about
metals; their weapons and tools were made of
stone, but as time went on, they made them better
and better, so that among the relics we find of
the later stone age are axes, beautifully polished
and strong and sharp enough to be used in work-
ing wood, knives, with keen edges, spear and
arrow heads, scrapers, for scraping the hair from
hides in making leather, and even such fine things
as razors, all made of stone. Some of the tribes
during the latter part of the stone age were won-
derful workers in both wood and stone. With
tools of the very hardest flint they cut softer
stones into great building blocks, built palaces
and temples, and monuments of all sorts, some
of which are found even to-day, buried in the
sand or earth, and well preserved in spite of their
great age. Whenever men of science dig up the
ruins of these ancient villages and towns, they
find weapons of flint and bone, the ashes of fires,
and many pieces of broken pottery, showing that
the use of fire, the making of stone implements,
[160]
TOR-AD THE POTTER
and the burning of clay pottery, were the first
three great steps taken by Man in his progress
toward what we call civilisation.
[161]
CHAPTER XII
HOW RA-NA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
A was a wise old man who had dwelt in
the valley for nearly a hundred years. He was
lame, having had his leg almost torn off by a bear
while hunting in the marshes, but his wits were
very keen.
He was one of the watchers of the Sacred Fire,
and lived in the Fire Cave with another old man
named Sut, who was almost blind.
There were great piles of firewood before the
cave, and more was stored inside, to be used in
wet weather. In the centre of the cave was a flat
rock, with a deep hollow in the top of it, in which
the fire burned. This fire was never allowed to
go out. One or the other of the old men watched
it day and night, throwing on a few pieces of
wood whenever they were needed. When rain
came and the fires the cave men had built outside
were put out, it was easy to build them again by
taking hot coals from the Sacred Fire.
[162]
HOW RA-NA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
Later on, the cave people learned a way to
make fire by rubbing two sticks together, but it
was a long time before they found out how to do
this, and meanwhile, they had to keep their
precious fire always burning, for fear they might
lose it.
Since the old men who watched the fire were
never allowed to leave it, they could not go out
to hunt for food for themselves, and so the cave
people brought it in to them; bits of fish, and
meat, and roots and grains and nuts. After a
while these offerings they brought to the fire
watchers came to be looked on as offerings to the
Fire itself; the people were thankful to the Fire
because it warmed them, when they were cold, and
frightened away wild beasts, and cooked their
food. So they began to think of the Fire as a sort
of god, and showed their thanks to it by bringing
in these offerings of food. In this way it soon
came about that the supply of meat, and fish, and
other things the people brought to the cave was
much more than the two old men could possibly
eat, so they hung the fish, and the strips of meat,
on poles stretched across the roof of the cave, in
[163]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
order that it might not be wasted. The nuts,
and grains, and sweet-tasting roots they piled up
in great heaps in the back of the cave. Ra-Na
and his companion did not know when they hung
the strips of meat and fish in the roof of the cave
that the smoke from the fire would preserve them.
They only thought that they would dry. But we
know now that if we hang fish, or meat, in the
smoke of a burning fire, it will be preserved from
decay, and will keep, without spoiling, for
months and even years. There are certain chemi-
cals, such as creosote, in the smoke from burning
wood, which go into the meat or fish and keep it
from decaying, and this way of preserving food
has been used from the earliest times, and is still
used to-day, just as it was thousands of years
ago, to make smoked fish, and bacon and
ham.
The weather in the valley had been growing
colder year after year, but so far there had been
very little ice or snow. Mother Nature, who was
now ready to teach her children another lesson,
called Cold to her.
"Cold," she said, "y u have certainly helped
[164]
HOW RA-NA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
me a great deal. Now I have something more for
you to do."
"What?" Cold asked. "Do you want me to
freeze your little people again? I love to make
them shiver and shake."
"I want you to send them Ice and Snow.
They might as well get used to such things, for
they are going to see a great deal of them from
now on.'
So Cold flapped his wings, and blew a bitter
blast from the frozen north, and all the little rain-
drops were turned to beautiful white flakes* of
snow, and all the marshes and streams and lakes
were covered with ice many inches thick.
The north wind swept through the valley like
a knife, and made the cave people shiver and
shake to their very bones. They put on their fur
coats, and huddled over fires in the caves, waiting
for the cold to go away, as it always had before.
But this time the cold did not go away, but got
worse and worse, and the snow whirled down
and covered all the valley, and the ice got thicker
and thicker. The cave people had never seen
anything like this before, and they were afraid.
[165]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
After a while, when they had eaten all the food
they had in the caves, they began to get hungry,
so hunting parties went out to find food. These
parties searched everywhere through the valley,
and the marsh-land outside, but they could find
hardly anything. The ice on the marshes kept
them from spearing fish; they broke holes in it
here and there, but the fish would not come near
the holes, and they could not reach them with
their spears. The thick snow which covered the
ground prevented them from finding any of the
sweet roots they often ate when other food was
scarce, and there were scarcely any animals about
that they could kill. The few that they saw
easily got away, for the cave people could not
run through the thick snow fast enough to catch
up with them. Party after party came back to
the caves with little or nothing at all; a few wild
fowl that they had managed to knock down with
stones, and some small animals that they found
frozen in the snow. There was not enough food
to go around, only a mouthful apiece, and as the
days went by, and the cold got worse, the cave
people once more found themselves starving.
[166]
THE SACRED FIRE
Many of them went to the cave of the Sacred Fire, and
prayed to it, for they thought the fire was a god which could
drive away the cold.
[167]
HOW RA-1STA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
Many of them went to the cave of the Sacred
Fire, and prayed to it, for they thought the fire
was a god, the spirit of warmth and heat, which
could drive away the cold. But they brought no
offerings of food to place before the fire, because
they had none to bring. Even to the fire
watchers they could bring nothing.
This, however, made no difference to Ha-lSTa
and his companion, because the fire cave was full
of food, and they had plenty to eat.
Ra-Na got to thinking about how hungry the
people were, and of all the good food in the cave,
so when any came to worship the Sacred Fire, he
gave them something to eat. Soon all through
the valley the people were saying that the Fire
God was taking care of his children by giving
them food, and they came, and were fed with the
smoked meats, and fish, and the roots and nuts
which the two old men had stored away.
It did not take very long to eat all this food
up, for there were many people in the valley, but
by the time it was all gone, the storm had passed,
and under the heat of the sun the snow and ice
began to melt, so that the hunting parties were
[169]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
once more able to find fish and animals for food.
They had a hard time, and many starved to
death, but the tribe was saved.
Ra-Na explained to the people how the Sacred
Fire had kept the meat and fish for them, and
they thought it a very wonderful thing, a miracle.
After that, when food was once more plentiful,
they brought great offerings of it to the Fire
Cave, to show how grateful they were for their
escape from starvation, and they laid away stores
in their own caves too, all through the summer,
for they had learned a great lesson, the need of
storing food for use during the winter. From
that time on the cave people were never in danger
of starving in the cold months, and for this they
gave thanks to the Fire God, and to Ra-Na and
Sut, who came to be looked upon as the Sacred
Fire's priests.
When the first men began to worship Fire,
they were giving thanks to one of God's great
forces, which had brought them comfort and hap-
piness in the shape of warmth and cooked food
and safety from their enemies, the wild beasts,
who feared the hot flames. This worship
[170]
HOW RA-NA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
of God's great natural forces was the begin-
ning of religion. Later on, they came to
worship the Sun, the Rain, the Wind, the Sea,
the Lightning, the Rivers and Mountains, seeing
in each the power of the Great Spirit which had
created them all. This early kind of worship
was in many ways very beautiful, but it was not
long before the priests of the Fire or other god
began to change it to suit themselves. Having
nothing to do but live in the cave or temple, and
be fed by the tribe, they found life very easy and
comfortable, and this made them think themselves
better than the common people. So they became
proud and arrogant, and made every one believe
they could get special favours from the gods. In
this way they came to rule the people, for they
would threaten any one who did not obey them
with the anger of the gods. It was very easy
for these priests, they had great power, and in-
stead of being two old men who watched the
fire, younger men became priests, with many fol-
lowers about them, all of whom the people had to
feed and support in idle luxury. Soon the priests
began to make all sorts of rules, telling the peo-
[171]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
pie what they should eat, and wear, ordering them
to build fine temples, in which the priests might
live, forbidding them this and that, and claim-
ing to have wonderful powers given to them by
the gods. They became very cruel, too, and not
only frightened the people by clever tricks, which
to these simple creatures seemed like wonderful
miracles, but told them to make all sorts of sac-
rifices to the gods, sometimes even human beings,
men, women and children, who, they said, had to
be killed and offered upon altars so that the
gods would not be angry. All this work by the
priests soon changed the simple religion of the
people, worshipping God through His great
forces into a brutal kind of religion which we
call Paganism. This rule by the priests lasted
for a very long time; it was found among all
the ancient peoples, in Nineveh and Babylon,
in Egypt, Greece and Rome, and it was only
when Christ came to teach people a better way
to worship the Divine Creator that people began
to understand that God is not cruel and angry,
asking sacrifices, but a God of Love.
[172]
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST BOW AND ARROW
AMONG a people whose whole life was spent in
fighting, and in killing animals for food, weapons
were the most important things. We have seen
how the cave men used clubs and spears, and later
stone axes and knives. But as the tribe increased
in numbers, so that the whole valley was filled
with them, it became harder and harder to get
enough food.
The cave men were very swift runners, and
often pursued and overtook the smaller beasts,
but there were many that they could not over-
take. There were also great flocks of waterfowl
that flew over the marshes. The hunters tried in
every way to kill these, but it was hard work.
Sometimes they would manage to hit one with a
well-aimed pebble or stone, but even though they
became skilful throwers, it was not easy to throw
a stone far enough, or with enough force, to kill
[173]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
an animal or a large bird. So they all tried to
think of some way to kill birds and animals at
a distance.
One of the first things they did was to invent
the sling. Some early hunter found out, that by
placing a smooth round pebble in a leather thong,
and whirling it about his head, he could throw the
pebble much further and harder than he could by
hand. It was not long before the cave men be-
came very skilful in the use of the sling. They
found out just the right moment to let go one
end of the thong, so that the pebble would fly
straight and hard toward the mark, and soon they
were able to hit and kill the marsh birds, some-
thing like our ducks, or geese, without much trou-
ble. But the sling, although useful against such
small game, did very little harm to animals of
larger size. A wolf or a bear paid no attention to
the pebbles that hit him, and either ran away, or
turned against the hunters and attacked them.
Of course the cave men soon learned how to
throw their spears, hurling them at the enemy
with great force and skill. But they could not
throw them very far, because they were so heavy,
[174]
THE FIRST BOW AND ARROW
so they made smaller, lighter ones called javelins,
which they could fling a great distance. The
further they threw them, however, the less cer-
tain was their aim, so they often missed.
On this account the early people tried in many
ways to find out how to throw their sharp-pointed
javelins a long distance, and at the same time
with correct aim. One way was to use a throwing
stick a short piece of wood with a handle to
it, and a groove along the top in which they laid
the javelin or spear. With these throwing sticks
they could hurl a spear a greater distance, than
they could in the ordinary way. Some of these
early peoples may have used the blow-gun, such
as is used to-day by the savages of the forests in
South America. These blow-guns are made of
long, hollow tubes of wood, such as bamboo, and
little poisoned darts are shot from them with
great force by blowing through one end of the
tube, just as boys to-day blow beans or bits of
putty from a bean shooter. But it was not until
man invented the bow and arrow that he found a
really serviceable weapon for killing things at
a distance.
[175]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Just how the bow and arrow came to be in-
vented we shall of course never know. Some
people think it came from the use of bent sap-
lings in making snares or traps. Such a sapling,
springing back when released, would throw a
small object a considerable distance. Some
think the bow may have developed from the bow-
drill. One of the first ways of making fire, as
we have said, was by rubbing two sticks together.
A simple way to do this was to twirl one stick
between the palms of the hands, like a drill, while
pressing it against a piece of softer wood. Later
on, men found that by twisting a double cord
between the ends of a bent stick, they could
twirl the drill by moving the bent stick from side
to side, and they used these bow-drills, as they
are called, not only to make fire, but to drill holes
in bone, or bits of wood, or even stone. But it is
very likely that man discovered the bow for
shooting with first, and later used the idea of the
bent stick to make the bow-drill.
Sometimes, when making and seasoning the
long handles of their spears, the early men may
have found that, if a spear shaft was crooked, it
[176]
BOWS AND ARROWS AND SLINGS
With the bow and arrow, early man could kill his enemies
at a distance.
[177]
THE FIRST BOW AND ARROW
could be straightened by bending it like a bow in
the opposite direction and tying the two ends to-
gether with a cord. This would have made a sort
of bow, and it may be that in some such way as
this man found that a string tied between the two
ends of a bent piece of wood could be used to
shoot a javelin or arrow a greater distance than
it could be thrown by hand.
But however the invention of the bow and
arrow came about, it was one of the most impor-
tant steps taken by early man. He was now able
to kill his enemies, his game, at a distance. As
he learned to use his new weapon, he slowly
found out the best kinds of wood to make it from,
picking out those which were tough, strong and
elastic. Not being able to cut down large trees and
saw them into strips, he was forced to make use of
small saplings, cut in the forests. He soon
found out that these saplings, when green, were
not hard and elastic; he had learned this in
making his spear shafts. But when such sap-
lings had been dried for many days before the
fire, they became fit to use. Then he would
scrape off the bark with a stone knife, make
[179]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
notches at each end, to hold the bow-string in
place, and cut down the thicker end of the sap-
ling until both ends of his bow were of the same
size. For his arrows he used thin strong reeds
at first, but later on made them of seasoned sap-
lings too, using a smaller size. He knew, from
making spears and javelins, how to fix at the end
of the arrow a stone point, or a head of sharp
bone, but he found out very soon that the arrows
would not fly straight unless they had a bit of
feather, or a tuft of grass fastened to their ends.
It may be that these feathers were first fastened
to the ends of the arrows as ornaments, just as
they had been fastened to the shafts of spears,
but when the cave men found that they would
make their arrows fly straighter, they used them
for that purpose.
The bow and arrow made it much easier for
the cave dwellers to get food, and in those days,
the getting of food was the chief object of their
lives. Always there stood before them the fear
of hunger. They had not felt this fear, when
the days were all pleasant and warm, and there
was plenty of fruit and nuts and game, but when
[180]
THE FIRST BOW AND ARROW
the cold came, and food was scarce, the hunter
who could bring back the most food became a
very important man in his tribe. So the cave
men tried very hard to become skilful in the use
of their new weapon. With fire to keep them
warm, caves to keep out the cold and rain, and
the bow and arrow to help them get food, they
became stronger and more fearless all the time.
But the tribe in the valley had grown so large
that there was no longer food enough for all near
at hand, and soon parties in search of game began
to wander farther and farther away from the
valley, building huts of brush in the forests be-
yond the hills, or digging caves in the earth to
protect them from the storms.
Mother Nature, who was watching the doings
of her children very carefully, saw that the valley
was getting too full, and began to make plans to
find a new home for some of her people.
"How will you do it?" asked the Sun, to whom
she had spoken of her plan.
"Watch carefully," Mother Nature replied,
"and you will see."
[181]
CHAPTER XIV
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
was a young man who was very rest-
less and unhappy in the valley. Ever since a
child he had heard the story of Tul and Ni-Va,
and how they went out from the valley and found
the sea, which the valley people called the Great
Water. Tul and Ni-Va had been dead for a
very long time, but still the old men, who had
heard the tale from their grandfathers, told it
about the fires at night, until the story became a
legend, and Tul and Ni-Va were spoken of as
children of the gods.
None of the valley people had ever tried to find
the Great Water again; they were happy and
contented where they were, and had no wish to
travel so far from their fires, their caves. But
Ka-Ma, who listened to the story with eager eyes,
vowed that some day, when he grew to be a man,
he too would brave the unknown dangers of
[182]
A-MA THE TRAVELLER
wi 3 old men spoke, and make his way to
th and from there to the ocean.
got this plan, when he grew older, but
soi > at night it would come to him again,
an< him restless and sad. But still he did
no1
j.nere r as a young girl in the valley called
Tuk ^e and Ka-Ma had played together
when i * children. They liked each other
very mu, vhen they grew older, they fell
in love witi \er, and wanted to marry.
In those dc ^ a young man saw a girl he
liked, he would ? rocks in the hillside and
prepare himself a "hen he would hunt for
her through the va '1. he found her, and
when she saw him con. would run, trying
to escape him, yet hoping eart, if she liked
him, that he would be swil ^n to catch her.
Then, if the young man did catch her, he would
take her in his arms and carry her to the cave he
had made ready, and it would be their home from
that time on.
Now Tula was swift, and strong, with long
yellow hair, and smooth white teeth, and as she
[183]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
grew up, Ka-Ma said to himself that he would
take Tula for his wife.
But Tor, who was the strongest man in the
tribe, and was called its chief, also likeu Tula,
and wanted her for himself. He had many other
wives, but none of them was as young a ad swift
and strong as Tula. So one day, Tor, seeing
Tula bathing in the river, waited for her in the
rushes beside the bank. When she came out, he
struck her lightly over the head with his stone
axe, and then took her in his arms and began to
carry her to his cave.
Ka-Ma, who had also been waiting for Tula,
saw this and it made him very angry. At first
he crept along after Tor, afraid to do anything,
because Tor was the chief of the tribe, but soon
his anger and courage rose, at the sight of Tula
in Tor's arms, and he ran up, axe in hand, and
demanded that Tor let her go.
The chief roared at him, and beating his breast
with his fist, told Ka-Ma to go away, but Ka-Ma
stood his ground, for he saw that Tula who had
now recovered her senses, was smiling at him.
Then Tor dropped the woman, and drawing the
[184]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
axe from his girdle, came at Ka-Ma to kill him.
The chief was very strong, but Ka-Ma was
younger and more active and quick. For a long
time the two fought, so that they were wounded
on the shoulders, and arms and chest, and the
blood ran down their bodies to the ground. Then
Tula, who wanted Ka-Ma to win, picked up a
stone and threw it at Tor, and struck him on the
side of the head, so that for a moment he was
stunned. With a great shout Ka-Ma raised his
axe, and springing forward, brought it down with
all his might upon Tor's skull. The heavy, sharp
axe broke through the bone, and into Tor's brain,
and he fell to the ground dead.
Ka-Ma was frightened by what he had done,
for he knew that Tor had many friends, who
would seek to kill him. So he hid the body be-
neath some leaves, and telling Tula to wait for
him, he went back to his cave, and got his spear,
and his bow and arrows, and tied what food he
had in a piece of skin and hung it over his shoul-
ders. Then he returned to the place where he
had left Tula, and together they fled from the
valley.
[185]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Ka-Ma, remembering what he had heard about
the journey of Tul and Ni-Va to the Great
Water, made up his mind that he and Tula would
go there too. The story told by the men said that
the path lay along the edge of the great marsh,
to a river, many times bigger than the one in the
valley, and that here the travellers had been sent
a log boat by the gods. Ka-Ma made his way
along the marsh, with Tula following him, carry-
ing the bundle of food.
It took them three days to reach the wide
river, because twice they lost their way, but at
last they found themselves on its banks. There
was no log boat in sight, however, and Ka-Ma
made up his mind to build a raft. He hunted
through the woods until he found eight or ten
smaller logs, and these he tied together with thin
strong vines, like grapevines, which he tore from
the trees. Then he and Tula got on the raft and
began to drift down the river.
Suddenly a shower of stones and arrows began
to fall about them, and looking toward the shore,
they saw a number of the valley people, friends
of Tor, who had followed them to the river.
[186]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
Ka-Ma snatched up his bow to return the fire,
while Tula, whose mind was very quick, began
to paddle the raft toward the opposite shore with
Ka-Ma's broad-bladed spear. It was slow work,
and meanwhile the stones and arrows kept on
falling about them, but moving along in the river
current, they were a hard mark to hit. So while
a few of the arrows and stones struck the raft,
they did no harm. Tula kept on paddling and
the raft slowly began to drift in toward the far-
ther shore, and finally grounded in the mud.
Snatching up their weapons and food the two
voyagers quickly waded to the bank and hid be-
hind a clump of trees.
Their pursuers, however, did not give up the
chase. Soon they began to bring logs from the
forest, and Ka-Ma saw that they, too, were build-
ing a raft. There were five of them in all and
they worked very quickly. In a little while a
second raft started across the river, on which
were four of the men. The fifth stayed on the
other bank. The four who stood on the raft
paddled very hard with their spears, as they had
seen Tula do, and soon the clumsy craft was in
[187]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the middle of the stream. Then Ka-Ma took
his bow, and fitted an arrow to it. Very carefully
he took aim, and fired. One of the paddlers on
the raft fell, with an arrow through his shoulder.
The others, however, came on.
Again Ka-Ma fired, this time at closer range,
and again his arrow found a mark in one of the
men. Then, as the raft drifted toward the shore,
Tula began hurling stones at it.
Unable to shoot their arrows with careful aim
while on the shaky raft, the two who were unhurt
began to retreat, paddling furiously in their haste
to get back out of range. One of the men, who
had been killed by an arrow from Ka-Ma's bow,
they pushed from the raft into the river. In a
moment the snouts of huge crocodile-like crea-
tures appeared from the water, and the body of
the dead man was torn to pieces.
The taste of blood made the crocodiles furious ;
they pushed their great bodies against the frail
raft, driving it this way and that, and soon the
vines which bound the logs together broke, and
the two passengers found themselves struggling
in the water. Their struggles did not last long;
[188]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
the hungry crocodiles rushed at them, and
quickly ate them up.
The fifth man, who had stayed on the shore,
set up cries of fear and rage, and ran away.
Ka-Ma and Tula, on the other side, watched him
go, glad of their narrow escape. They did not
try to continue their journey that day, but made
a camp on the river bank. They had no fire, to
keep away wild beasts, so Ka-Ma watched all
night, spear in hand, while Tula slept.
In the morning, after eating the last of the
smoked meat they had brought with them,
Ka-Ma added some new logs to his raft, and
bound it with stronger vines, so that there would
be no danger of its coming apart, in case the
crocodiles attacked them.
When they pushed off from the shore in the
morning, they found the current much stronger
than it had been the afternoon before ; there was
a tide running toward the ocean, but Ka-Ma and
his wife, who did not know what a tide was, were
thankful that their raft moved so swiftly. There
were no crocodiles to be seen.
All day long they drifted toward the sea. The
[189]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
forests on each side of the river became thinner
and thinner, and by the time the sun was sinking
below the trees, the raft had come to the mouth
of the river, and the voyagers saw before them
the wide curving surface of the ocean.
The sight of the Great Water terrified them,
they were drifting right toward it, and their raft,
unlike the log of Tul and Ni-Va, did not ground
on a sand bar, but kept right in the middle of the
rapid current. They were very hungry, for they
had had nothing to eat since morning, and their
tongues were dry and swollen from thirst. The
legend told by the old men in the valley
had said that the river water as it neared the ocean
was salt and bitter, not fit to drink. They had
tried to drink it, as the day wore on, but
could not, and the salt made them more thirsty
than ever.
These troubles, however, they soon forgot in
the terrible fear that they would be washed out to
sea. Being land people, they were afraid of the
great, wide ocean; they wanted to feel the earth,
solid and firm, under their feet. And each
moment they saw themselves being carried far-
[190]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
ther away from it. The mouth of the river was
now so wide, that in the twilight they could
scarcely see the low, sandy shores.
Both Ka-Ma and his wife knew how to swim;
they had learned this, in the river which flowed
through the valley at home. With his spear in
hand, while Tula carried the bow and arrows,
Ka-Ma sprang into the water, and Tula followed
him. Afraid as they were of the crocodiles, they
were more afraid of the sea, so they struck out
for the shore with all their might.
When they were almost tired out, they felt the
sandy bottom under their feet, and a few mo-
ments later they had waded to the bank, where
they lay for a time in the warm sand, resting.
Hunger and thirst drove them to their feet, for
they knew they must find food and water before
the darkness came. Ka-Ma remembered that the
tale of the old men spoke of strange food, in
shells like nuts, which Tul and Ni-Va had dug
from the sand. With the point of his spear he
also began to dig, and soon a pile of shell-
fish lay before him. When they broke the shells
open, they found soft, jelly-like creatures inside,
[191]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
which tasted very good and were moist enough to
take away a little of their thirst. At last, when
night came, they threw themselves on the sand
tired out, and without keeping watch, slept until
the dawn.
In the morning, Ka-Ma's first thought was to
find water. Even the shell-fish they ate for
breakfast did not satisfy their burning thirst.
They went up to the higher ground of the shore,
but the sand was hot and dry, with no sign of a
stream anywhere. Only a few low bushes and
trees grew about, and they tried to relieve their
thirst by chewing the tender green leaves.
Mother Nature, who saw the danger they were
in, called Wind and Rain to her and told them to
make a storm. When noon came, the waves of
the ocean were dashing against the shore with a
roar like thunder, and the rain poured down in
torrents. Ka-Ma and Tula lay on the ground,
with their mouths open, but the few drops which
fell upon their tongues was not enough to sat-
isfy them.
When the storm was over, however, and the
sun came out again, they found many pools in
[192]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
hollow places in the rocks, and from these they
drank their fill. Then, feeling stronger, they
went back farther and farther from the ocean,
until they found a clump of trees, with coarse
grass growing about, and a spring of fresh water
forming a little pool. The place where these
trees grew was on a fairly high hill, overlooking
the ocean, and here Ka-Ma decided to make their
home. He knew, of course, that they could never
again go back to the valley.
He had always been used to living in a cave in
the rocks, until now, but here there were no rocks,
except those which jutted out along the seashore.
So he built a strong hut of saplings and rushes.
First he cut with his stone axe two posts, higher
than his head, and as thick around as his arm.
At the top of each of these posts was a fork,
where the sapling had branched into limbs. He
dug two deep holes in the ground with his spear,
and set the two posts in them, pounding down
the earth about them until it was firm and hard.
Then he cut a third pole, and laid it across the
top of the other two, its ends resting in the two
forks. Tula, using rope made of plaited marsh
[193]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
grass, bound the cross-pole firmly to the posts.
When this was done, Ka-Ma cut many more
long slender saplings, and placing one end of
each on the ground, rested the other end against
the cross or ridge pole, to which Tula tied them
fast. These long slanting poles on each side,
from the ridge pole to the ground, made a sort of
tent. Then they gathered great bundles of the
long tough rushes which grew in the salt marsh
along the river bank, and wove these in and out
of the slanting poles, until they had made a sort
of ragged frame like coarse basket work. On
top of this they laid more rushes, running the
same way as the poles, that is, from the ridge pole
to the ground, until the roof was many inches
thick. Over these they tied more poles, to hold
the rushes in place. One end of the little hut they
blocked up with earth and brush; the other they
left open, for a door, so that they could crawl
inside and keep dry when it rained. Ka-Ma was
very proud of his hut; he had built smaller ones
like it, with his companions from the valley, when
hunting trips kept them away from the caves for
several days, but he knew this one was to be his
[194]
Palaeolitkic Arrow Hea<ls
Pti'rut scraper
Concave Scraper
Using Skin. Scrape*
Neolithic Knife Dagger
;Racloir or Side Scraper
PalaeoUbhLc
Heads
EARLY STONE WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS
[195]
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
home, so he took great pains to make it large
and strong.
It took them several days to build the hut, and
meanwhile, Ka-Ma had speared fish along the
river bank, and shot some wild birds with his
bow and arrow, so that Tula and himself might
have food. Having been used to eating their
food smoked, or cooked, they did not like the raw
birds and fish so much, but they had no fire, and
knew of no way to get any. So they made the
best of what they had.
Here Ka-Ma and his wife Tula lived for many
years, and their children grew up, and built other
huts in the little grove, and thus was formed the
first tribe of men to live by the sea. Because
the way they lived was different from the way in
which their forefathers had lived in the valley,
they too became different. They ate more fish,
and less meat, and because they killed but few
animals, they did not use skins for clothing, but
as we shall see later, began to weave a coarse
grass-cloth out of the rushes they found in the
marsh. They became great swimmers, built
rough canoes out of wicker, covered with skins*
[197]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
and because it was not easy to spear fish in the
deep waters of the river, the way it had been in
the great marsh, they one day invented the fish-
hook. All these things, however, we shall tell
about in another chapter.
[198]
CHAPTER XV
THE SEA PEOPLE
As Ka-Ma's children grew up, he taught them
all the things he knew, how to make weapons and
tools of stone, how to dry and season wood, for
spear handles, and bows and arrows, how to make
cord of fish guts, or the twisted stems of marsh
grasses, how to spear fish, use the sling, and shoot
with the bow. But he could not teach them how
to make pottery, for he could find no clay, and
worst of all, there was no fire with which to burn
it, even if he had found the clay.
The young people, who had never seen fire,
and did not know what it was, were quite content
to eat their food raw, for they had never tasted
it any other way, but Ka-Ma thought every day
of the Sacred Fire, and wished that in some way
he could get it again.
Sometimes, when he was drilling a hole in a bit
of shell, or in a stick of wood, with a sharp-pointed
[199]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
piece of flint, it seemed to him that the drill grew
very hot, but no fire came.
One day Ka-JVIa took the dried shell of a nut
which he had found in the forest, and after cut-
ting off one end, began to drill a hole in each side
of it. Through these holes he meant to run a
cord. Not having any bowls or jars of pottery in
which to carry water, he thought he could make a
sort of water bottle out of the large nut. Then,
when he went hunting, or fishing, he could carry
the bottle about his shoulders by means of the
cord, and so have fresh water to drink during the
long, hot day. He had never done this in the
valley, because there was plenty of water all
about, sweet and fresh, but here all the water was
salt, except in the little pool near his hut, and so
he either had to carry some with him or go thirsty.
He used a thin sharp piece of flint with a
wooden handle to bore the hole, twirling it rapidly
between the palms of his hands, and at the same
time pressing down upon it as hard as he could.
It was a very hot day. The soft, moss-like fibres
which covered the outside of the nut were dry as
tinder. As the drill cut slowly into the hard
[200]
THE SEA PEOPLE
shell, Ka-Ma saw, to his surprise, a tiny wisp of
smoke curl up from the hole. Its smell told him
it was the same smoke he had smelt so often in
the Fire Cave at home. Harder and harder he
pressed the drill down, faster and faster he
twirled it, and then, suddenly, the smoke burst
into a tiny flame, which licked up the dry fibres
about the edge of the hole and was gone.
Filled with wonder, he tried again and again,
and each time the little flame appeared, and went
out. At last, after he had thought for a long
while, he picked a bunch of the dry moss-like
fibres from the shell, and giving it to one of his
sons, told him to hold the fibres in the flame the
next time it appeared. He also gathered beside
him a heap of dry leaves and grass.
When the boy put the fibres into the flame,
they blazed up at once, and burnt his hand so
that he dropped them with a cry of pain, but
Ka-Ma took the blazing bit and placed it among
the dry leaves and grass, and in a moment he had
a fire. Tula, who had been watching him, quickly
brought reeds, and bits of wood, and soon a hot
fire was roaring in front of the hut. The children
[201]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
gathered about, astonished and a little afraid,
but Ka-Ma and his wife were filled with joy. He
did not know why the fire had come, for he did
not understand that friction, caused by rubbing
two objects together, makes heat, but he was very
grateful, for he had now found a way to make
fire whenever he wanted it. For this reason, it
was not necessary for him or his family to keep
the fire going night and day, and thus the new
tribe no longer thought of the fire as sacred.
They did not worship it, the way the valley peo-
ple did. Being able to make it whenever they
wanted to, it no longer seemed to them so won-
derful, nor were they afraid of losing it. Instead
of worshipping fire, they began to worship the
Sun, and the Sea.
That night, Ka-Ma cooked some fish over the
hot coals, and he and all his family had a feast.
Later on he showed his children how to preserve
fish by smoking them, the way his people had
done in the valley. Then he began to search
through the back country for clay.
At last he found some, and it was not long
before the new tribe was using pottery bowls and
[202]
THE SEA PEOPLE
jars, just as they were used by the tribe in
the valley.
One of Ka-Ma's sons, named Ran, was a great
fisherman. No one could spear fish so well as he.
In the ocean, of course, he could not reach them,
for the water was far too deep, and the surf too
strong, but he waded in the shallow spots along
the river banks, and when he saw a fish lying in
the mud, he would bring his spear down as quick
as a flash, and rarely ever missed.
It was not long, however, before the fish be-
came frightened, and when they saw anything
moving about in the water they would swim
away. This made it harder and harder to get
them, and Ran sometimes spent a whole day,
without bringing home more than one or two.
One day, while resting on the river bank, he
saw a large fish snap up a little one and devour
it. Ran thought that this might be a good way to
bring the fish within reach of his spear, so he
managed to catch several of the little fish by
driving them into a shallow pool. Then he took
the cord from his bow, and after tying one of the
little fish to the end of it with a bit of grass, he
[203]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
lowered it into the water. Quick as a flash a
large fish darted up, snapped away the little
one, and was gone before Ran could raise his
spear.
When Ran saw that the strings of grass would
not hold the little fish tight enough to his bow-
cord, he tried to think of some better way to fasten
them. One of his arrows had a head made of a
sharp-pointed piece of bone about as long as his
finger. Taking this piece of bone from the
arrow, he sharpened the other end of it also, by
rubbing it on a rough stone. Then he tied the
bow-cord tightly about the middle of the piece of
bone, and stuck the two sharp ends both ways
into the body of one of the little fish. The large
fish, he knew, would be unable to bite through the
piece of bone, and while trying to tear the small
fish loose, Ran believed he would have time to
spear him. Once more he lowered the bow-cord
into the water.
Soon a big fish darted up, but instead of trying
to tear the smaller one loose, he swallowed it
whole, and started away. Ran had no time to use
his spear, but neither was the big fish able to get
[204]
THE SEA PEOPLE
away, for as soon as he jerked against the strong
bow-cord, the piece of bone turned crosswise and
its sharp points stuck firmly in his throat. Ran,
not expecting this, was almost pulled off his feet,
but he could not let go of the bow-cord because
the loop at the end of it was about his wrist. In a
moment he had recovered his balance and hauled
the big fish ashore.
Although he did not know it at the time, Ran
had made a great discovery. His hook and line
were very poor and clumsy, but he had caught a
fish with bait, and this was something no man had
ever done before. He tried again and again, and
while he was not always successful, and often
pulled the little fish right out of the big one's
throat because the piece of bone did not turn and
stick fast, he still had caught seven or eight by
the time the day was over.
Ran's clumsy tackle was only a beginning.
Later on, the sea people made fish-hooks in many
ways. One was to tie a sharp thorn, at an angle,
to the end of a bit of stick, fastening it firmly
with wrappings of sinew, or gut. Another was
to make the same sort of a hook out of bone.
[205]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Still another was to carve a hook from stone, with
a barb on it, like the barbs they made on their
stone arrow heads, so that the hook would not
pull loose. Long cords of gut, or twisted grass
served them as lines. Soon the sea people were
fishing from rafts, in the river, or from the rocks
along the sea coast, and as they caught more, and
bigger fish, they found it easier to get food in this
way, than by hunting in the back country for wild
animals. Thus they had fewer and fewer skins
and furs to keep them warm, and this fact caused
them to discover a way of plaiting and weaving
cloth out of the tough marsh grasses, to use as a
covering for their bodies in winter time.
Isn't it curious to think that learning how to
make fish-hooks should also have taught them
weaving? and yet it did, as you can see. All
during the cold weather in the valley Ka-Ma and
his wife had been used to wearing cloaks of fur,
had been in the habit of sleeping in warm, cosy
caves, in which, in the coldest weather, a fire was
kept burning. The hair on their bodies, like
that of all the cave people, had grown thin, and
no longer served to keep them warm. Their chil-
[206]
THE SEA PEOPLE
dren by the sea were born the same way, with
very little hair; they could not stand the bitter
cold of winter without some covering for their
bodies. At first, when the sea tribe was small, it
was an easy matter to go into the back country,
far up the river, and kill bears and other wild
animals for their furs. As the years passed, and
the tribe grew larger and larger, this was no
longer easy, for the young men of the tribe, while
brave swimmers and fishermen, had forgotten, or
never learned, how to attack and kill the wild
beasts which lived inland. So the sea people
had to look about them, to find some other
material out of which they could make clothes.
From the time they built their first brush huts,
they had learned how to plait together the long
reeds, in making roofs. Later, the art of fishing
taught them how to twist the finer grasses, long
and tough, into thin strong cords. By tying a
row of these cords between two poles, and then
weaving other cords in and out across them, the
sea people found they could make a thick, tough,
durable sort of cloth, like grass matting. It was
not warm, like fur, but it would keep off the cold
[207]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
rains, and was much better than no covering
at all.
Leather, too, they learned how to make from
the skins of some of the animals they found in the
sea; great creatures, like walrus, or seals, that
they fought and killed on the rocks along the
coast. Living as they did more in the open air
than the valley people, sleeping in huts instead of
caves, wearing few furs, they grew tougher and
stronger than the people in the valley, and were
very brave and hardy and daring.
With their cords of grass, they learned before
long to make nets, with which they caught fish
in the river, wading in the water and pulling the
nets between them. They lived on fish and wild
fowl ; they knew little of the fruits, nuts or roots
which the valley tribes ate. Sometimes hunting
parties went up the river, and brought back fresh
fruits, but not often. It was toward the sea that
they turned for new adventures.
[208]
CHAPTER XVI
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
FOB a long time after Ka-Ma and his wife
came to live beside the sea, his children and his
children's children continued to use rafts, made
of logs tied together, for floating on the waters
of the river. They never ventured on the ocean
with these rafts, because of the heavy waves, and
surf. Once or twice a raft was swept from the
river into the sea, but the waves dashed over it,
washing the men upon it into the water, and
finally tossed it like a cork through the foaming
surf and left it, battered and broken, on the
beach. Some of the sea people were drowned in
this way, and this made them very careful when
they used their rafts upon the river.
There was a young man in the tribe named
Ma-Ya, who used to sit for hours on the beach,
looking out across the ocean, and wondering what
was on the other side. He thought the ocean was
[209]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
a very wide river, too wide for him to see across,
but he believed that if he could find some way of
reaching the other side, he might find a new coun-
try, filled with strange adventures. The early
men who lived by the sea always felt this call to
cross its wide surface, and find new lands. It
was the spirit which drove the early Norsemen,
the Vikings, to Iceland, and later on, all the way
across the Atlantic to the shores of North Amer-
ica, many centuries before Columbus made his
first voyage. It sent these same Norsemen
southward, around the shores of Spain to the
coast of Africa, and into the Mediterranean Sea
until they came to Italy, and even to the shores
of Asia. But all this was thousands of years
later, when man had learned how to build stout
ships out of wooden planks, driven by long rows
of oars, and sails.
Ma-Ya, sitting on the beach, made up his mind
that some day he would cross the Great Water,
and see what was on the other side. He believed
there was land there, because he often saw flocks
of birds winging their way inland from the sea,
and he felt sure that in the place from which they
[210]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
came there must be food for them to eat, and
trees for them to nest in, just as there were in
his own country. But he knew he could never
venture to make such a voyage on a clumsy raft.
One day, while fishing along the banks of the
river, he saw, floating in the water, a dry leaf. A
caterpillar had spun his cocoon in .it, and with his
web had drawn together the ends and sides of the
leaf in such a way that it took the form of a per-
fect little canoe. When Ma-Ya saw it, it was
gliding rapidly down the stream, dancing over
the little waves like a bit of thistledown. In the
centre of it lay the single passenger, the cater-
pillar in his cocoon.
Ma-Ya thought how nice it would be if he had
such a boat to ride in. He thought about this a
great deal, and finally an idea came into his head.
Why could he not make himself a boat shaped
like that, large enough to carry him and one of
his companions upon the surface of the water?
But it was a long time before he found a way
to do it.
The sea people had learned a great deal from
twisting and weaving rushes and reeds together
[211]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
to form the roofs and framework of their huts.
Ma-Ya thought that in this way he might use
reeds to make the framework of a boat.
So he got a great pile of reeds and wove them
into a large round basket, shaped something like
a bowl, and big enough to hold him. Then he
covered the basket with the skin of a sea animal
he had killed, tying the edges of the skin to the
rim or edge of the wicker bowl. When he put
his new boat in the water, it floated very nicely,
but it had a bad habit of turning round and
round, no matter which way he paddled. Still,
it was much lighter than a raft, and could be used
to cross the river in, or to fish from in quiet pools.
But Ma-Ya was not satisfied with it; he wanted
a boat which would be longer and narrower, with
pointed ends, so that it could be more easily
driven through the water. So he kept on think-
ing and thinking.
These round basket-work boats were called
coracles, and sometimes, instead of being covered
with skins, they were made by plastering all over
the basket-work surface a kind of pitch that the
early people found oozing from the ground.
[212]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
They were not very useful boats, however, and
that was why Ma-Ya made up his mind to build a
better one.
At last, after thinking about the matter for a
long time, he found a way. First he took two
long, stout poles of seasoned wood, such as the
tribe used for making the handles of their spears.
These two wooden poles he laid side by side on
the ground, and then bound their ends tightly
together with leather thongs. When this was
done, he pulled the two poles apart in the middle,
bending them like two bows until they were about
three feet apart. A stick of this length, placed
between the two poles in the middle, kept them
apart. He now had a strong framework, very
much the shape of a long, narrow leaf, pointed at
each end, and widest in the middle.
When this was done, Ma-Ya got another pole
about three feet longer than the framework, and
bent the two ends of it upward at right angles to
the main part of the pole. These bent ends, which
were about eighteen inches long each, did not
bend upward sharply, like the upright leg of the
letter "L," but sloped upward on a curve, like
[213]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
the sides of the letter "U." Then he fastened the
two uprights to the ends of his framework, with
the straight part of the pole eighteen inches
below it. This gave him the main framework of
his boat. Then he took many strong slender
reeds and bent them U-shaped, fastening the
middle or bottom of the "U" to the bottom pole,
and the two ends to the two upper or side poles.
Because these side poles were widest apart in the
middle, the U-shaped reeds were wide and flat
there, but toward the two ends of the boat, the
: 'U" shapes became narrower and narrower until
at the ends they were shaped like a narrow "V."
These bent reeds formed the ribs of the boat, and
were held in place by wrappings of strong cord.
When they were all in place, Ma-Ya took more
reeds and wove them in and out lengthwise of the
boat, between the ribs, making a coarse basket-
work, just as he had done in making his coracle.
The framework of the boat, when done, looked
like a coarse wicker basket made in the shape of
a canoe.
For a covering, Ma-Ya used the back part of
the hide of a great walrus he and some of his
[214]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
companions had killed upon the rocks. This
hide, while still moist and soft, was placed upon
the wicker framework and drawn over the upper
edges, or gunwales, of the boat and fastened with
thongs. At either end the hide was stretched
tightly upward, and bound to the tops of the two
posts or uprights at stem and stern. There were
no openings or seams in the hide whatever, so
that there could be no leaks. When the hide had
become dry, it stretched tightly over the frame,
and became very hard and tough, yet the canoe
was so light that Ma-Ya could lift it in his
two hands.
He placed it in the water, and with a paddle
such as the sea people used for their rafts,
climbed aboard.
It did not take him long to find out that his
canoe was very easily upset. If he leaned too
much to one side or the other, it would turn over,
and leave him to drag it ashore and empty the
water out of it before trying again. After a
while, however, he got used to the new boat, and
found that with a few strokes of his paddle he
could send it through the water at great speed.
[215]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
His companions, who had laughed at it, at first,
soon saw that Ma-Ya had made something that
would be very useful in fishing, and in getting
about on the water, and they too began to build
boats of wicker-work, covered with skins. Up to
now, the sea people had found it very hard to
paddle their heavy rafts up the river, owing to
the strong current, but in the swift, light canoes
they could go wherever they pleased.
Ma-Ya's idea, however, was not to go up the
river, so much as it was to sail on the ocean. As
soon as he had learned how to manage his new
craft, he allowed the current to sweep him
through the river mouth and out on the broad
surface of the sea. It was a quiet day, with no
wind blowing, and Ma-Ya found that his little
craft rode the long ocean swells as lightly as a
cork. He paddled about for several hours, de-
lighted with his success, and then drove his new
boat back into the river mouth and pulled it up
on the shore.
The next day he told one of his brothers of his
plan to try to cross the Great Water and see
what was on the other side, and the two adven-
[216]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
turers placed provisions, and some jars of water,
in the canoe, and started out.
This time, however, there was a strong wind
blowing from the ocean, making its surface very
rough. What had seemed to be only tiny waves,
from the shore, turned out to be dangerous white-
caps, which swept over the frail craft ready
to fill it with water. The wind, too, became
stronger, so that Ma-Ya and his companion could
hardly paddle against it. Stronger and stronger
grew the gale, and more and more weary grew
the arms of the two paddlers. Soon they saw
that instead of making any headway, they were
being slowly driven back toward the shore. Their
water jars had been upset by the plunging of the
boat as it tossed in the waves, and more and more
spray came aboard with every gust of wind.
Ma-Ya became afraid, and told his companion
they must try to paddle back to the mouth of
the river.
This, however, they soon found they could not
do. The gale had driven them a mile or more
down the beach, and they could not force the
boat back against it. Light as it was, and float-
[217]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
ing on the surface of the water like a leaf, it was
at the mercy of the wind. In a few moments the
two voyagers saw that they were being driven
right toward the surf which thundered on the
sandy beach. They paddled furiously, trying to
keep the bow of the canoe pointed toward
the shore, and waited to see what would hap-
pen. The great breakers lifted the tiny craft
in their arms as though it had been a speck
of foam, and hurled it round and round to-
ward the beach. In the twinkling of an eye
it was filled with water, upset, and Ma-Ya
and his companion were left struggling in the
waves. Luckily they were strong and fearless
swimmers, and after a long fight, managed to
make their way through the surf, almost battered
to pieces. The sea folk, who were gathered on
the shore watching them, ran down into the water
and pulled them up on the beach. The little
canoe was washed in and out again for many
minutes, rolling over and over in the boiling surf
like a huge fish, but at last it too came tumbling
upon the sands, crushed and broken. The sea
people pulled it up out of reach of the waves, and
[218]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
Ma-Ya gazed at it sadly. He knew now that
while his frail craft was good enough for sailing
on the river, it would never do for crossing the
Great Water. So he made up his mind to think
of something else.
It was many years before Ma-Ya made his
next boat, and this time it was of wood.
He knew that the shape of his little canoe had
been right, but that to stand the waves of the
Great Water it would have to be made of some-
thing much stronger and more solid than wicker,
covered with skin. The only thing he knew of
was wood, yet his brain, which was only just be-
ginning to think, told him no way in which he
could make a boat out of wood.
One day, while far up the river in a canoe, he
came across a huge log, the trunk of a tree, which
had been blown down by the wind. It had drifted
along the river from the forests above, and finally
stuck on a mud-bank, where it was held by its
dead branches.
Ma-Ya climbed up on this log and looked it
over carefully. Something about it made him
think of a boat. This was because the tree was
[219]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
partly hollow; a long stretch along one side of it
had rotted away. Ma-Ya cut at the rotten wood
with his stone axe, and found it soft and crumbly.
He thought that if he and some of his com-
panions were to dig out the centre of the log with
their axes, and roughly chop the two ends to a
point, they would have a large and strong boat,
which even the waves of the ocean could not harm.
It would take a long time, he knew, but he had
nothing to do, and some of his friends, to whom
he had told his plan to cross the Great Water
and see what was on the other side, offered to help
him. The next day, with axes and chisels of
sharp flint, a little party went up the river to the
mud-bank where the log lay, and began work
on it.
The pointing of the ends was a long, hard task,
but little by little they cut away the dry wood,
and after many weeks the outside of the log
began to take the shape of a boat. The task of
digging out the inside was easy at first, where the
wood was soft and rotten, but after a time the
rotten wood was all cut away, and then the work
became very hard. Knowing that fire would
[220]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
burn away the wood, Ma-Ya told his companions
to start little fires all along the surface on which
they were working, and when the fires had
charred the inside of the log a little, they put
them out and chipped away the burned wood.
Over and over again they did this, for many
weeks, and at last the inside of the log had been
cut away until there was room in the new boat
for fifteen or twenty men. Its sides were very
thick and strong ; they did not dare to burn away
too much of the wood, for fear they would make a
hole right through it. When it came time to push
the new craft off the mud into the water, they
found it so heavy that they were obliged to call for
help. Finally, with thirty or forty men pushing
and pulling, the great boat was slid into the water,
where it floated almost as well as the lighter
canoes. With paddles in their hands, Ma-Ya
and a dozen of his friends scrambled aboard, and
sent the new craft flying down the river.
Ma-Ya and his friends made many voyages on
the ocean in this boat, but although they some-
times paddled for two whole days, they never
were able to cross the Great Water. No matter
[221]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
how far they went they could see nothing beyond
them but the blue surface of the ocean, stretching
as far as the eye could reach. All of Ma-Ya's
friends said that there was no other shore to the
ocean; that it went on and on until it joined the
sky, but Ma-Ya refused to believe this, because
of the flocks of birds he watched coming in from
the sea. But he never found the other shore of
which he dreamed.
One thing, however, he did discover, a very
great thing indeed, although Ma-Ya did not
know, then, how great it was. He found out how
to make the wind move his boat, by using a sail.
And like nearly all of the discoveries of the early
people, it was made by accident.
Sometimes, in the middle of the summer, the
sun on the water became so hot and burning that
the men paddling the boat could hardly stand it.
It was warmer in summer, in those days,
than it is now, and the blazing rays of the sun
often made the handles of the paddles so hot the
men could scarcely hold them. To keep off the
sun, Ma-Ya would lash some upright poles to the
sides of the boat and hang from them a cover, or
[222]
MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
awning, made of grass-cloth. One day, while
paddling up the broad mouth of the river, a
squall came up behind them, and striking the
awning, turned it sideways, like a sail. At once
the boat began to fly through the water so fast
ahead of the squall that the paddlers found their
work of no use, and drew in their paddles.
Ma-Ya set up a great shout and pointed to the
sail. His companions did not understand at first,
but when they saw the boat sailing along without
their paddles being used, they too understood,
and also began to shout. Not knowing how to
stop, they sat doing nothing while the heavy
squall carried them far up the river and finally
drove them ashore on a sand bar.
Ma-Ya was delighted. He lashed a stronger
upright pole near the front of the boat, with an-
other pole across it, from which he hung a large
piece of grass matting, and the next time they
went out, the wind took them along in fine
fashion. Coming back, however, they had to use
their paddles, for Ma-Ya did not know how to
sail against the wind, nor did the sea people dis-
cover how to do this for a very long time.
[223]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
Ma-Ya was a great inventor. He gave to the
sea folk boats and sails. But he was never able
to cross the Great Water. When he died, he
called his children and grandchildren about him,
and told them to keep on trying, and some day
they would find the land of the flying birds.
[224]
CHAPTER XVII
THE CONQUERORS
MANY hundreds of years had passed, since
Ka-Ma and his wife Tula left the valley, and the
tribe of the cave people had grown very large.
The whole valley was now filled with them, and
they had spread out over the hills which sur-
rounded it, and far into the country beyond.
The head man, or chief of the tribe lived in the
largest of the rock caves, and had many wives
and children. Those who had gone outside the
valley formed separate tribes of their own, each
with a smaller chief, but all of them were under
the rule of the head chief.
The rocks all about the valley sides were
honeycombed with caves, and as the tribe grew,
and there were not enough caves for all, these
bands of adventurers would leave the valley, and
make new homes of their own on the hillsides,
and in other valleys beyond them.
[225]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
There were no longer any animals to be killed
for food in the valley of the caves, and the people
there gave up being hunters, and spent their time
making things, such as pottery, stone implements
of all sorts, weapons, leather, moccasins, and
smoked meats and fish. They were the workers,
while the tribes outside were the hunters and
fishers. When any man in the outside tribes
killed more deer, or caught more fish, than he
needed, he would bring them to the people in the
valley, and exchange them for spear heads,
smoked meats, pottery, tanned leather, or any of
the other things he needed. This was the very
beginning of barter, or trade. When one tribe
had more than they needed of one thing, and
another tribe had more than they needed of an-
other, they would exchange with each other, so
that both were better off. This trading of things
between peoples is what makes up the business of
the world to-day. If the people in the United
States have more wheat, or beef than they need,
and the people in England have more leather
goods, or cutlery, or woolen cloth, or the people in
France more silks and satins, we send our wheat
[226]
THE CONQUERORS
or beef, or cotton to them, and bring back their
leather goods, or cutlery, or silk.
In the beginning, it was very easy for a hunter
to bring a bundle of skins, or a string of fish into
the valley, and exchange it for what he needed,
a stone axe, or a leather coat, or a pottery bowl.
Later on, when the tribes of men had spread far
over the country, it often happened that the
hunter who brought a bundle of skins to one
tribe, did not want to buy anything from that
tribe, but instead, wanted to go to some other
tribe, a long distance off, to get something they
had which he particularly wanted. This made a
difficulty, and to overcome it, something was
needed that could be exchanged with any tribe,
and yet could be easily carried about, on long
journeys. So the people began to use beads, and
later on, when metals had been discovered, orna-
ments such as bracelets, or rings made of copper,
or gold, and these beads and ornaments became
the first money used by man. But this came later
on ; now the traders exchanged one thing for an-
other, just as they do in savage countries to-day.
There were some grasses which grew in the
[227]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
valley, which bore tiny hard seeds or grains on
their tops, and for a long time the cave people
had made use of these grains for food, when other
things were scarce. After a while, they noticed
that if they let any of these grains fall in the soft
earth, they would grow up again, and have more
grains on them. They saw that this was an easy
way to get food, so they took the grains and
planted them, scratching up the hard ground with
the points of their spears. Later on they made a
tool something like a hoe, by fastening a sharp
piece of stone crosswise at the end of a stick, and
used this to loosen the ground for planting
the grain.
All the grains, such as wheat, corn, rye, or oats,
the roots, such as potatoes, beets, carrots, pars-
nips, and the like, and the many other vegetables
we eat, once grew wild, and were very small and
hard. But every sort of plant grows better, and
has larger seeds and roots and fruit, if it is culti-
vated, that is, if the soil in which it grows is
loosened up and made soft, so that the rain can
easily get to its roots, and the roots can spread
out, sucking moisture and chemicals from the
[228]
THE CONQUERORS
ground. For this reason the early men found
that the grains, or roots which they planted, kept
growing larger and better to eat, year after year,
and as the valley and the country around it be-
came filled with people, and food became scarce
and harder to get, the people in the valley who
did not move away began to plant and grow
many of these roots and grains, and they were the
first farmers. As Mother Nature had so often
told the Sun, it was the search for food, the strug-
gle to keep alive, that taught the first people
almost everything they knew.
At first, the people chewed the hard grains,
and swallowed them, just as they would eat nuts,
but it was a good deal of trouble to do this, so
while the men were away hunting, the women
would take the grains and pound them up in a
hollow stone, with another stone, round and
smooth, and sometimes having a handle to it.
This made a coarse kind of flour. Adding a lit-
tle water to it, they mixed a sort of paste, which
they moulded into little cakes and placed in the
sun to dry. In this way they made the first
bread. Later on, instead of drying these cakes
[229]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
in the sun, they found they could do it more
quickly by placing them on flat stones, heated
very hot in a fire, and these cooked cakes of oats,
and wheat and rye soon became one of their chief
articles of food.
They found it easy to keep the grains and roots
during the winter by storing them in their caves,
usually in great earthen jars. They tried to keep
some of the fruits in this way too, berries, and
wild grapes, but the fruits would not keep. In-
stead, they turned sour and fermented, forming
wine, which the people drank, when they were
tired, and cold, to cheer them up. Among the
very earliest peoples of which we have any rec-
ord, wine was used ; we find it spoken of often in
the Bible, and the writings on the tablets of clay
dug up in the most ancient ruins. Living as they
did a rough life in the open air, these early
peoples could drink wines without harm. It
was not until thousands of years later that men
found out how to distil the strong spirits and
liquors which are so harmful to people living the
indoor lives we lead to-day.
The valley people were by now no longer sav-
[230]
Hollow Rock
for grinding
corn.
Primitive Shape of Cakes
of Bread.
v ,,~ Fire Making: Early Method of creat-
< ( -\j) ) ) \ ing Fire through friction caused by
& I ' '<' twirling flint-headed stick upon fibrous
f.f / // iS . -1 T 1
cocoanut shell.
EARLY METHODS OF BREAD AND FIRE MAKING
[231]
THE CONQUERORS
ages. Even in the arts they had made some
progress. Their pottery bowls and jars were
ornamented with designs in black, and red and
other crude colours. They made ornaments of
beads, and painted designs on their leather cloth-
ing, or sewed coloured beads on them, in various
patterns. The walls of their caves were covered
with rude pictures or drawings, they carved drink-
ing cups from the horns of the animals they
killed, and their stone axes and other implements
were smooth and polished, and sometimes carved
with pictures and rude signs like letters. Weav-
ing had begun among them, as well as among the
sea tribes, but the cords they wove together, in-
stead of being made of grass, were of twisted
hair, or wool, scraped from the skins of animals.
They were much more civilized than the people
who lived by the sea, for although the sea people
had made boats, with sails, and hooks and nets for
catching fish, they knew nothing of planting
grains, or making bread from them. Each peo-
ple was going ahead in its own way.
Among the hunters who spread from the val-
ley into the surrounding country was a young
[233]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
chief named Ban. He was very strong and
brave, and nobody in his tribe could throw the
spear so far, or strike so hard a blow with the axe.
Being a mighty hunter, he pushed farther and
farther away from the valley, always seeking the
places where the most game was to be found.
Year after year he and his tribe moved nearer to
the sea, but this they did not know, for they had
never seen it.
One night, while chasing a huge bear, Ban and
his hunters reached the top of some low hills, and
here, having killed the bear, they made a camp
and slept. In the morning, Ban, who had climbed
upon a tall rock, found himself looking over a
great wide valley, which sloped down and down,
mile after mile, until the far side of it was lost in
the morning mists. Soon the sun dried up the
mists, and there, far away, was a wide strip of
water, shining in the early sunlight like a river of
silver. Ban called some of his companions to
him, and they gazed at it a long time in silence.
They knew it was water, but they did not know
it was the ocean, but supposed it to be a great
river.
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THE CONQUERORS
Ban was tired of living in the hills, and wanted
to find a new home where fish and game were
more plentiful, so he told his companions to
go back and bring up the whole tribe.
Soon they came, several hundred of them, the
young men with their weapons, the old men, the
women and children bringing the pottery bowls,
the furs and skins, the food. They left the brush
huts they had been living in, and swarmed down
the slope of the hillside like so many bees. When-
ever the early tribes got tired of living in one
place, and decided to find another home, they
moved like this, in a great swarm, just as bees
do when the hive becomes overcrowded, and some
must seek a new place to live in. Later on, when
there were many more people on the earth, these
great movements or migrations of tribes and races
were made by hundreds of thousands, and even
millions, wandering through the country for
thousands of miles, destroying everything in their
path, and finally coming to rest in a new home,
and founding a new nation.
Ban and his people moved slowly toward the
sea, hunting and camping as they went. At last
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
one day they came to the seashore, and stood on
the smooth white sand, gazing at the ocean in
wonder. They saw no one about, and there
was very little to eat, so they set out along the
shore, hoping to find a better place to make
a camp.
For two days they wandered along the ocean,
shooting wild-fowl, catching some turtles, and
killing a few seals they saw on the rocks. When
they found they could not drink the ocean water,
some of them wanted to go back to the hills, but
Ban would not let them.
"Let us keep on," he said. "Somewhere there
will be water we can drink." So they went on,
slaking their thirst with the blood of the birds and
animals they killed, or with rainwater they found
in hollows in the rocks.
On the third day, some of Ban's men, who had
been going on ahead, came back, and said that
they saw smoke rising into the air, far up the
beach. They thought it might come from the
fires of one of the other valley tribes, on a hunt-
ing trip. Ban gave the order to hurry on.
Soon they came to a point of rocks, on which
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THE CONQUERORS
there were many seals. Far out on the point they
saw some men, hunting them. Ban's people set
up a great shout to these men, who stood looking
at them in surprise.
Ban and some of his fighters called to the
strangers, and the men on the rocks called back,
but neither could understand what the others
said, for in all the many years the children of
Ka-Ma and Tula had lived by the sea, they had
made a new language for themselves, different
from the language of the people of the valley.
When the hill people heard these strange words,
and saw the grass-cloth clothing the sea people
wore, they knew them to be strangers, and not of
the valley tribe. This at once made them
enemies, and they began to throw stones at them
with their slings, and to shoot at them with
arrows, and hurl their spears.
The little band of sea folk fought back as best
they could, but the hill people were too many for
them, and soon they were all killed. Then the
hill men took their weapons, and ornaments, and
clothing, and divided them up, and went on,
shouting, toward the smoke they had seen.
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
They found other bands of the sea people
along the shore, and some fought and were killed,
while others ran swiftly back toward their homes
to give warning to the tribe.
When Ban and his men reached the village of
huts, a little army of the sea tribe stood ready to
give battle, but they were not many, for most of
the young men were away in their boats, fishing.
A terrible fight now began. The sea folk tried
bravely to defend their homes, and killed many of
Ban's men, but there were not enough of them,
and before long they were overcome. Then the
hill tribe swarmed down on the village, killed the
old men and children, and took the women pris-
oners to make them slaves. The village they set
on fire and burned.
Some few of the women escaped, and ran down
to the shore of the river, near where it emptied
into the sea. Here a path led to some rocks,
where the fishermen got aboard their boats.
A great log canoe, seeing the smoke from the
burning village, came quickly down the river,
with ten men on each side paddling as hard as
they could. They knew that their people were in
[238]
THE CONQUERORS
danger, and came to save them. As they reached
the little landing, the women who were huddled
there cried out to them, telling them that a great
army of strange men had killed all their com-
panions, burned the village, and taken the women
prisoners. At first those in the boat wanted to
come ashore and fight, but in a moment Ban and
his followers came crowding down toward the
landing, shouting, and throwing stones and shoot-
ing arrows. So the men in the canoe quickly
dragged the women aboard, and paddled away
from the shore, out into the middle of the river,
where the hill men could not get at them. Here
many of their companions, who had been fishing
in other canoes, joined them, shouting with rage
at the enemy on shore, and shooting at them with
bows and slings.
The battle raged in this way for hours, but
although more of the sea people came up in their
boats, they were not nearly as many as the hill
men were, because most of the tribe had been
lost in the first battle, defending their homes. So
they dared not go ashore, for they knew if they
did they would be killed.
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
All night they stayed in their boats, calling out
in rage against their enemies, who shouted back,
daring them to come ashore and fight. In the
morning a storm came up, and scattered the
boats. Some of them were driven ashore, and
the men in them captured or killed by the hill
people. Some were driven out to sea, and being
small and light, were sunk. But the great log
canoe in which the women had taken refuge had
a grass-cloth sail, and the storm drove it far out
over the ocean.
There was a young chief in this boat named
Tul-Ab, who was strong, and skilful and brave.
He divided the water they carried among the men
and women, and gave them fish, which they had
caught, to eat, and sat in the stern of the boat all
night and guided it with a paddle, to keep it from
being upset by the waves. He had heard, when
a child, of the land of the flying birds across the
Great Water, and he hoped that the storm might
carry them there, and so save their lives.
By the next afternoon the weather had cleared,
and Tul-Ab saw in the distance a high, rocky
coast, against which the waves were beating
[240]
THE CONQUERORS
fiercely. He roused the men in the boat, and told
them to take their paddles and keep the canoe
from being driven ashore until he could find a
safe place to land.
After a time they came to a place where a river
ran through the cliffs into the sea, and here they
found a little harbour, and were able to make a
landing on a quiet beach. Tul-Ab's companions
went ashore and threw themselves on the sand,
tired out after the terrible night. But Tul-Ab
went in search of water, and found some in hol-
lows in the rocks and filled their jars. Then
they caught some fish, and made a fire to warm
themselves, and spent the night in some holes in
the side of the cliff.
All these things the Sun had been watching,
and he was soriy to see the sea folk destroyed.
When Mother Nature came to look at the earth,
he spoke to her.
"What is the use of making such a nice tribe by
the sea, and then letting the people from the hills
kill them?" he asked sourly.
"They are not all killed," Mother Nature re-
plied, laughing at him. "I wanted some of them
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
to go to that big island they have just found, and
so I let Ban and his people come and drive
them there."
"Why did you want them to go to the island?"
asked the Sun. 'Weren't they getting along
very nicely where they were?"
"Yes. They learned many things. But here,
on this new island, they will learn much more. It
is a very large island, as you can see, and there
are metals on it, and many other new things for
them to find out about. If I don't spread my
new men around a little, they will always stay in
one place, and the earth will never be populated."
"It is a pity they have to fight, and kill each
other," the Sun said.
"Yes," said Mother Nature. "It is a pity, but
men are going to keep on fighting and killing
each other for thousands and thousands of years.
The battle you saw between the sea people, and
the tribe from the hills, was the beginning of
war. These two peoples hated each other, be-
cause their language, and their clothes, and their
ways of living, were different. And as one tribe
hates another, for these reasons, so will nations,
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THE CONQUERORS
which are only great tribes after all, hate each
other, and fight and kill, for a very long time in-
deed, even after they have become what they call
civilized, and fight with terrible engines of war.
which fly in the air, and swim under the water,
and blow thousands of persons to pieces in a sin-
gle moment. That is the law of force, that the
strong must overcome the weak, and only when
man has become really civilized, and learned the
law of love, will fighting stop. They have to
fight now, for in that way they become strong,
and brave, and get courage to conquer the
winds and the sea, and the cold and heat, and
spread to all the parts of the earth. Not until
long after this is done will men learn that they all
belong to one great tribe, and that it is not neces-
sary to fight each other any longer, but to help
each other. It is the same on all my other worlds
the people fight each other for a long time,
like bad children, until one day they find that
they are not children any longer, but grown up
men and women, and then they do not fight
any more."
"I should think that God would make them
[243]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
that way in the first place," grumbled the Sun.
"He could, you foolish creature," said Mother
Nature, with a frown, "but if He made His peo-
ple and His worlds perfect to begin with, there
would be no need to create them at all. God is
like a weaver, weaving a wonderful pattern. He
finds joy in His work. If it were all finished as
soon as it was begun, even God Himself would
have no purpose. All things must grow slowly
and beautifully, from the seed to the plant, from
the plant to the tree, from the tree to the perfect
fruit. You, Sun, are growing too. Some day,
your heat will be gone, and you will grow old and
die. You will be cold, and dark, without any
light to shine with. Then it may be that the
Great Mind that made you, will cause you to live
again. Meanwhile, do each day what you have
to do, and stop grumbling about things you do
not understand."
[244]
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ISLAND MEN
THERE were twenty-two men and eight women
in Tul-Ab's little party. The great log canoe had
been crowded.
The place where they landed was a little har-
bour at the mouth of a small river, with high
cliffs on either side of it, and a narrow beach at
their feet. They managed to catch some fish in
the bay without much trouble, and to find dry
brushwood for fire, but there was no water to
drink, except the little they had found in the hol-
lows in the rocks, left there from the rainstorm of
the night before. The shallow caves in which
they slept were only holes in the rock.
When morning came, Tul-Ab and some of his
men began to climb up the cliffs, in search of
water, and a place to make a camp. They did not
like the small caves along the shore ; they wanted
to be higher up, where they would be safe from
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
attack, and where they could build brush huts of
the kind they had always lived in.
They found a smooth grassy place at the top
of the cliffs, from which they could look far out
over the sea. There were no trees on the cliff
top, but only some low bushes. A stream, how-
ever, came from the rocks higher up and crossing
the little plateau, tumbled over the edge of the
cliffs into the sea. All over the surface of the
plateau were many flat rocks, some small, some
very large and heavy. An easy path down the
side of the cliff led to the beach below, where they
had spent the night.
Tul-Ab and his men were troubled, because
they found nothing about them the way it had
been in their other home. There were no trees
on the cliff tops with which to build huts; they
saw some, on the hills further back, but they were
small and stunted. Nowhere did they see any of
the marsh grasses and reeds they had used so
much in making their houses. Yet they liked the
place they had found for a camp, because it was
high and safe from attack, in case Ban and his
hill men should come after them from the other
[246]
THE ISLAND MEN
shore. Tul-Ab looked about and saw nothing but
rocks, and the thought came to him, why not
build houses for themselves out of these rocks.
He picked out a great flat boulder near the
stream, and he and his men dragged up other
boulders, and arranged them in the form of a
square. On these they placed more stones,
choosing the flat ones, until they had built four
walls, as high as their heads. In one of the walls
they left a hole for a door, placing over its top a
long, flat stone, to keep the wall above from fall-
ing down. The front wall they built higher than
the back, so that the roof of the house would
slant, to make the rain run off.
The roof bothered Tul-Ab a great deal. If he
had had reeds and marsh grass, he would have
known what to do, but he could find none. With
his men he went farther up the hillside and cut
down many of the short stunted trees, and these
they laid side by side across the walls of the house
to make a roof. There were spaces between
these logs, through which rain would come, so
they cut sods of earth from the grassy surface of
the plateau, and covered the roof with a thick
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
layer of them, with flat stones on top to hold the
sods in place. When the house was done, Tul-Ab
took it for his home, for he was the chief, and he
also took one of the women for his wife.
When the first stone house had been built, the
little tribe built others, until there was room for
all to sleep protected from the rain. Not know-
ing what wild animals, or even men, might live in
the woods further back from the shore, they also
built a stone wall across the neck of the plateau,
so that on one side their camp was protected by
the cliffs leading down to the ocean, and on the
other, by this wall of stone. They brought great
piles of firewood into the camp for cooking the
fish they caught, and the waterfowl they shot
with bows and arrows, along the shores of the
little bay at the foot of the cliffs. Every day the
men went out hunting and fishing in the canoe,
sometimes on the ocean, when it was smooth, and
at others, on the bay, or up the river which ran
into it. They could not go up this river very far,
because of the rocks in it, which made rapids,
over which the boat could not pass. But they
often went beyond the rapids on foot, and
[248]
THE ISLAND MEN
brought back wild hogs, and many small furry
animals they had never seen before, and some-
times bears and horned deer.
Having no marsh grass from which to weave
cloth, the tribe began once more to use skins and
furs for clothing, and to eat more meat, and less
fish, than they had eaten in their old home. The
country of the sea people had been flat and
marshy, while that of the valley tribes was hilly
and far from the sea, but in the new home of
Tul-Ab and his tribe, they found both the hills
and the sea, close together, and so they grew to
be like both the sea folk, and the people of the
valley and the hills from which they had first
come.
Already, in building things of stone, they had
done something that men had never done before.
Instead of living in caves, or brush huts, they
had built houses of stone, and a stone fort. This
was a new thing, and from it they began to learn
to be carpenters. As the tribe got larger, and
more houses were built, they found they could
make the roof logs fit closer together by chipping
off the two sides of them, and so they made the
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
first hewn timbers. It was not long, before they
found they could split the logs with stone wedges,
and in this way make rough planks, or boards.
These boards they fastened to cross pieces with
wooden pegs, to make doors for their houses to
keep out the wind and snow and rain.
The women they had brought with them had
children, and these children grew up and had
more children, and before very long there were
many hundred people in the tribe, and their stone
huts dotted the cliffs as far as the eye could see.
When they found there was not room enough be-
hind the first wall for the growing village, they
built another and longer wall, further back from
the sea, for they were always afraid of being at-
tacked, on account of the way their former vil-
lage had been destroyed. Only the very oldest
men remembered this now, but they told the story
to the younger men, around the fires at night,
and when these grew old, they told it to their
children and grandchildren, so that it became a
legend in the tribe that they had come from an-
other country, where enemies lived who might
attack them. A watchman stood day and night
[250]
THE ISLAND MEN
on the cliffs, looking out over the sea, ready to
light signal fires, in case he saw boats coming
toward them from across the water.
The island people found plenty of flint, out of
which to make weapons and tools for working
wood, and they were very skilful fishermen, and
also great hunters with the bow and arrow. As
they made hunting trips far back into the coun-
try, they found many different kinds of wood for
making bows and small canoes, but no reeds were
to be found, so they forgot the art of making
basket work. Neither did they find any clay, for
a long time, and when the few bowls and jars
they had brought with them were broken, they
made drinking cups of the horns of animals, or
of wood. They still used smoked meat and fish,
but they knew nothing about planting and grow-
ing grains to make bread.
These people were great workers in wood and
stone. They worshipped the Sun, and built a
temple to him of huge upright stones, set in a
wide circle, with a flat altar stone in the middle,
on which they placed their offerings of meat and
fish. These offerings they burnt with fire, be-
[251]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
cause the priests of the temple told them it
pleased the Sun to smell the smoke of the burning
flesh as it rose up in the sky. Twice in the year
they had great feasts. One was when the days
began to get longer, in the spring, and fruits and
flowers began to grow. This time is in March,
and we call it the vernal equinox, because then
the days and nights are of equal length, and
equinox means equal nights. From then on,
until June, the days grow longer and the nights
grow shorter. From June till September, the
nights grow longer and the days shorter, until
once more they are the same length, and this is
called the autumnal equinox. Then the island
tribe held another festival, the feast of the har-
vest. After that the nights began to grow
still longer, and the days shorter, because the
sun was going away from them more and more,
all through the cold winter. Even to-day we
remember these two festivals, by offerings of
flowers in the spring, at Easter time, and by the
harvest feasts which country people still hold
in some places at the end of the summer, when
the harvests are gathered in.
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THE ISLAND MEN
The island people built their houses and tem-
ples of stone. With wood they at first made only
roofs and doors, but it was not long before they
began to use it for building other things, such as
boats. They found no big trees of soft wood on
the rocky hillsides, out of which they could make
large canoes. So they hewed planks out of the
smaller trees, and built the first wooden ships
made by man. They could not be called ships,
at first, for they were only small boats, but as
time went on they built them larger and larger
until they would carry forty or fifty men.
Modor was the first man to build one of these
boats and he was a skilful carpenter. He hewed
a long heavy keel for his boat out of a tree trunk,
and at each end he set up a stout post, one for
the stem, the other for the stern. Wooden braces,
or knees, as they are called, fastened by pegs,
held the posts to the keel. Modor's tools were
heavy stone axes, wedges of stone to split planks
with, saws, made of jagged, toothed pieces of
flint, with wooden handles bound to them, sharp
flint knives for making wooden pegs, and drills,
for boring holes for the pegs. With such rough
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
tools it was not easy for Modor and his com-
panions to build a boat, but they were strong and
patient, and worked very hard.
After the stem and stern posts had been fas-
tened in place, ribs were pegged to the keel to
form the frame of the boat. These curved ribs
they made in two ways. One was to hew them
from the crooked limbs of trees. The other was
to take straight pieces of wood and soak them for
many days in water, until the wood became soft
and pliable, and then bend them to shape, and tie
them that way with leather cords while they dried.
When the ribs had been fastened to the keel
with wooden pegs, long strips of wood were bent
around the tops of the ribs, from the stem post to
the stern post, and fastened to each rib with a
peg. This made the framework of the boat, and
now it had to be covered with planks.
Modor and his helpers took the split boards
they had made and bent them over the frame-
work, with a peg at each rib to hold them, and in
this way covered the whole framework of the
boat. Of course a boat built in this rough way
would not be water-tight ; there were many joints
[254]
THE ISLAND MEN
and seams between the rough planking through
which water would leak. But Modor had found,
oozing from the pine trees, a black, sticky sort
of gum or pitch, and this, with soft fibres from
the bark of trees, he used to calk his boat and
make it tight. The way he did this was to heat
the pitch in a large shell, dip the fibres in it, and
then drive them into the cracks with a stone
wedge. In this way, after many trials, Modor
at last got his boat so that it would not leak.
He built a deck of wood over the forward part
of the boat, and across the middle part he put five
board seats. These seats were for the paddlers
to sit on, but the paddles were so long, in order
to reach the water, that they were like oars, and it
was hard to handle them against the ocean
waves. So Modor drove pegs into the edges or
gunwales of the boat to hold the oars in place,
and men thus began to row boats, instead of pad-
dling them, as they had their canoes and rafts.
As we have seen, the tribe had almost forgot-
ten how to weave, because they no longer had the
tough marsh grasses to make cord from. But
Modor twisted the fibres from the bark of certain
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
trees into strong cords, and took them to some of
the old women, who knew how to weave, and they
wove him a sail from them. Then he put a mast
in the middle of his boat, with a pole or yard
across it, and hung the sail from this yard, with
strong cords tied to its lower corners to hold
it down.
In this boat Modor and his companions made
many voyages along the coast, fishing, and hunt-
ing. On one of these trips he found a marsh
covered with reeds and rushes, but he did not
gather them, for the tribe had no use for them
now. On another voyage Modor's boat was car-
ried by the wind across the water to a low shore.
It was the same shore from which Tul-Ab and
his companions had fled hundreds of years be-
fore. When Modor's boat came in sight of the
beach, he saw many men running along the sand,
waving their spears and shouting. Several
canoes crowded with fighting men came out from
the shore. Then Modor lowered the sail of his
boat, and the rowers bent to their oars, and soon
left the canoes and the shore far behind.
When Modor got back to the village he told
[256]
THE ISLAND MEN
the old men what he had seen, and that night
around the camp fires they told again the story of
Tul-Ab, and sang a song about him, and his
coming to the island.
The next day the chief of the tribe, whose
name was Gudr, told the watchers on the cliffs to
be very careful, and to keep their eyes always on
the sea, for he feared that the people from across
the water might come to attack them. But for a
long time none came.
Other men in the tribe also built boats like the
one made by Modor, larger ones, and they carved
the heads of animals, or birds, or fish, out of
wood, and fastened them at the bows of their
boats, and this was the first use of figureheads,
which you can see on some sailing ships even now.
They painted the boats with red, and yellow and
blue earths, mixed with fish oil, and stained the
sails different colours with the juices of berries
and plants.
One day, while digging along the bottom of
the cliffs for red earth with which to make paint
for his boat, Modor came across a lump of some-
thing that he at first thought was stone. It was
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
yellow in colour, and very heavy. He laid it on
a rock, and beat it with the head of his axe, ex-
pecting it would break. But instead of breaking,
it flattened out, and began to shine, where the
axe head struck it, like the rays of the sun.
Modor was very much pleased with his find, be-
cause it was so pretty, and he beat it out into a
thin strip, and rubbed it bright with a stone, and
bent it like a bracelet about his upper arm. His
companions, when they saw it, liked its pretty,
bright colour, but beyond that, they paid no
attention to it. They did not know that Modor
was the first man in the world to discover a metal.
The bracelet he had bent around his arm was
made of pure gold.
[258]
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
THE Stone Age on earth lasted for a very long
time; much longer than you would think, as you
read this story. From the time when Ra made his
first stone-pointed spear many, many thousands
of years had passed, and still men knew nothing of
the use of metals. In some parts of the earth, as
the tribes migrated, and spread to new countries,
stone weapons and tools were used for thousands
of years longer; in fact, they are still used, even
to-day, by certain savage tribes. But in other
parts of the earth, men discovered metals, and
how to use them, and soon the age of bronze
began.
In Nature's great storehouse metals are found
in two different ways. Some of them, such as
gold, tin, and copper, occur free, that is, they are
found in the rocks in solid veins. When these
rocks are broken up by the action of the weather,
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
or by swift-flowing streams, the bits of metal,
being very heavy, fall to the bottom, and are
found in lumps, or nuggets in the sand and
earth along the shores.
Other metals, such as iron, are usually found
in nature in the shape of ores, and can only be
gotten out of these ores by smelting, that is, by
heating the ores in a hot fire.
Early man, of course, found the free metals
first, and it was a very long time before he
learned how to smelt ores, and make iron, and
steel. The ancient Egyptians carved their won-
derful statues, their huge obelisks, with tools of
copper, hardening the soft metal in some way, so
that it would cut the toughest stone. The secret
of hardening and tempering copper in this way
has been lost, and the most skilful metal workers
to-day do not know how to do it.
When Man first discovered gold, the only use
he made of it was for ornaments, just as Modor
twisted the golden bracelet about his arm. Tin,
too, although harder than gold, was of little use
to him. Even copper, the hardest of the three,
was too soft in its natural state to be used for ,
[260]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
anything but knives, or swords, and even these
were not so good as those made of very hard
stone. But when it was found that copper and
tin, melted together, would form what is known
as bronze, hard, tough and strong, a new era or
age began, known as the Age of Bronze.
It was long after Modor found the lump of
gold, however, that the use of bronze began.
The island men kept watch from their village
on the cliffs for many years, expecting each day
to see a fleet of canoes come across the water from
the far-off mainland, but as time passed they
forgot about their enemies, and went on fishing
and hunting and building boats in peace.
Then, one day, when the sea was quiet and
smooth, a watcher on the cliffs saw a boat far off
on the horizon, and as it came closer, others ap-
peared behind it until there were forty or more
in sight. He gave the alarm, and soon the smoke
went up from the signal fires, calling all the fish-
ing and hunting parties home as quickly as
possible.
The attacking fleet was made up of many large
log canoes, driven by both paddles and sails.
[261]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
The hill men whom Ban had led to conquer tr
tribe by the sea knew little or nothing about
making boats when they came, but the prisoners
they had taken, women, and a few men, they
made their slaves, and from these they learned
how to make canoes of wicker and skins, and also
how to burn them out of logs. As time went on
Ban's tribe became great fishermen, just as the
sea people had been before them, and travellers
came down from the valley, bringing grain, and
fine pottery, and many other new things that the
sea people had known nothing about. This made
the tribe of Ban very powerful and strong; from
the slaves they had learned to make fish hooks,
and nets, and grass cloth and boats, and from the
hill people, and the dwellers in the valley, they
learned how to make bread, and wine, and to
plant things for food, and make clothing of
leather and skins instead of grass cloth, and much
besides. Soon all the country between the valley
and the sea was covered with people, and now the
new tribes that wandered away from the valley
went inland, settling new country, for there was
[262]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
no longer any room for them, in the direction of
the sea.
When the tribe of Ban, and the other tribes
that now lived along the seacoast, wanted to find
new places where there was plenty of game, there
was nowhere for them to go. The sea stopped
them. But they knew, when they saw the boat of
Modor sail along their coast, that the old legend
about the land of the flying birds was true, and
that somewhere across the Great Water was a
new country, where there might be plenty of
game, and room for them to live. So a thousand
of them, in fifty great canoes, twenty men to a
canoe, set sail on a voyage of discovery. It was
their boats that the watchers on the cliffs saw
coming toward them.
When the smoke signals went up, all the boats
of the island men came flying home, and gathered
in the bay below the cliffs. The entrance to the
bay was narrow, and they decided to fight from
their ships, and keep the enemy's boats out. Un-
less these could get into the bay, there was no way
in which the men in them could climb up to the
[263]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
village on the high ground above, for the cliffs
on the ocean side were much too steep to climb.
The invaders lowered their sails and paddled
about the mouth of the bay, trying to make up
their minds what to do. They had not expected
to find such a rocky shore, for their own coast
was flat and sandy. Then suddenly they decided
to sail into the bay and attack the ships of the
island men inside.
The island men's ships were larger and higher
out of the water than the log canoes, but there
were not nearly so many of them ; less than thirty
in all, some large and some small. Their sails
were lowered, but rowers manned the oars, while
on the decks forward stood fighting men, with
spears, slings and heavy rocks, and bows and
arrows. Along the shore of the bay, at the foot
of the cliffs, more fighting men stood, while
above, in the village on the plateau, were the
women, the old men and children, all ready to roll
great stones down the path which led up the cliff,
in case any of the enemy should try to climb up
that way.
The canoes of the invaders swept into the bay
[264]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
through its narrow mouth, and at once dashed
toward the opposing fleet, their crews cheering
and shouting. At the same time the boats of the
island men advanced to meet them, led by Modor,
who had become the chief of the tribe, now that
Gudr was dead. Modor, whose vessel was in the
lead, told his men to row as hard as they could,
straight at the first canoe. The tall prow of his
boat hit the canoe and crushed in its side, so that
it sank, and all the crew were thrown into the
water. This battle was the very first sea-fight,
and Modor was the first man to ram an enemy's
ship.
Other ships belonging to the island men came
up, and other canoes were rammed. The men in
the water tried to climb aboard the ships, but they
were struck with axes, or pierced with spears, so
that the water of the bay was red with blood.
But the island men did not have things all their
own way. Some of the canoes attacked the ships
in pairs, one on each side, and their crews sprang
aboard and fought with the island men on the
decks, so that many were killed on both sides.
Some of the sea people ran their canoes ashore,
[265]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
and jumped out on the sand. Here they were
met by the defenders on the beach, who fought
with them to protect their homes.
The battle raged with fury for two or three
hours, but at last, when many of their boats had
been sunk, and the crews killed, the sea people
gave up the fight and paddled out of the bay.
Modor now gave a great shout and called to his
men to follow in pursuit. The ships, with their
long oars, were faster than the canoes, in the
rough water outside the bay, and rammed and
sank many of them. Only twelve out of the fifty
that came, managed to escape; their crews pad-
dled away with all their might, and soon they
were mere specks in the distance.
Then Modor and his ships came back to the
bay, the wounds of his men were washed and
bound up, and a great feast was held that night
to celebrate the victory.
In the enemy's canoes that had been driven up
on the shore they found all sorts of provisions;
cakes made of grain meal, and jars of wine,
neither of which they had ever seen before. They
also found round wicker baskets, for holding fish,
[266]
THE FIRST MUSIC
One of the men had taken the shell of a sea turtle, and
stretched some thin strings of gut across it and he picked
these strings with his fingers while singing his song.
[267]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
and strong cords of twisted grass, and many pot-
tery jars and bowls.
They ate the bread cakes, and drank the wine,
which made them very merry and gay. The old
men, who later on were called bards, made a
song in honour of Modor's victory, and one of
them played the first music that man had ever
heard. He had taken the shell of a sea turtle,
and stretched some thin strings of gut across it
and he picked these strings with his fingers while
singing his song. Many hundreds of years later
these bards, with their rude harps, wandered all
through the country, from village to village,
entertaining the people around the fires at night
with songs of the mighty deeds of Modor and
other great chiefs and leaders of the past. In
those days, before people had learned to write,
these bards were the ones who kept the history of
the past, and even to-day we can find some of
their songs and stories in the ancient sagas and
legends of almost every people and country.
Some of the deeds of these ancient heroes as told
by the bards were so wonderful that the people
came to look upon them as gods.
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
One of the young men in Modor's boat made a
new discovery, while the battle was going on.
When the attacking canoes came alongside, he
sprang into one of them, followed by some of his
companions, and fought the crew with his axe. A
shower of sling stones from another canoe flew
about him. To protect his face and head from
the stones he snatched up the round wicker top
of one of the fish baskets, and held it before him,
so that the sling stones bounced off and did him
no harm. This was the first shield.
Later on, when the battle was over, he took one
of these round wicker tops, and stretched a piece
of heavy leather over it. Then he fastened two
leather thongs on the inside, so that he could slip
his arm through them and so hold the shield be-
fore him while still having his hand free to
grasp his bow.
Modor, who was a great chief, as well as a
skilful carpenter, saw how useful this was at
once. He sent a party up the coast to where he
had seen the reeds growing, and had them bring
back many bundles of them. With these he
showed the women how to make frames of basket-
[270]
THE FIRST ARMOUR
Modor made wide gold bands and put them on each arm from
the elbow to the shoulder, and these bands, originally orna-
ments, formed the first metal armour.
[271]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
work, and cover them with tough hide, so that
each man had a shield to defend himself with.
Another thing that came from this battle was
the beginning of the use of armour. One of the
sea folk had struck Modor a heavy blow across
the arm, that would have cut it to the bone, had
not the axe fallen upon the thick band of gold
Modor wore on his arm. After this, Modor
hunted for more of the gold, and when he found
it, he made many more wide gold bands, and put
them on each arm from the elbow to the shoulder,
and this was the first use of metal armour. But it
was a very long time before men came to use
heavy armour of brass, and iron and steel.
Modor loved adventure, and he made up his
mind to gather a fleet of ships, and cross the
water to the land of the sea people, and attack
them. But he did not live to do this. One day,
while hunting in the marsh of the reeds, up the
coast, a great beast like a rhinoceros, with long
woolly hair, and sharp horns on its snout, charged
down on him and his companions. They fought
bravely, but Modor and two of his men were
killed, and the rest fled to their boat, afraid.
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THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
The whole village mourned Modor with songs
and cries of grief, and the next day a party went
to the marsh and brought back his body. They
buried it in a grave on the plateau, with great
stones over it to mark the place. With his body
they buried the dead chief's spear, and axe, and
his gold armlets and shield, for these people be-
lieved that the dead would live again, and would
need their weapons in the other world.
For hundreds and hundreds of years after this
the island people lived in peace. The tribe grew
very large, and spread far inland, where they
found pleasant meadows, and forests, and banks
of clay from which to make pottery. They built
many stone villages and temples, and made arm-
lets of gold, as Modor had done, and sewed plates
of it to their belts, and ornamented the handles of
their spears and knives with it. They also found
tin, from which they made ornaments of a shining
colour like silver, and copper, from which they
made spear heads, and axes, beating them into
shape with hammers of stone. With coloured
clays, and the juices of plants, they stained their
[274]
THE FIRST SEA FIGHT
bodies in strange patterns, and coloured the
shafts of their arrows and spears.
In the forests of the island were many wild
animals, bears, great horned deer, and savage
wolves, while along the rivers that flowed through
the marshy country were huge beasts like the
rhinoceros, and wild boar and snakes. From
fighting these enemies they became fierce and
brave, and when the bards sang of the men who
came to attack them from over the sea, they
would beat their weapons on the ground, with a
loud noise, and talk of setting out to conquer
them, as Modor had planned to do. But it was
not until long after, when a chief named Mor
came to be head of the tribe that they crossed the
Great Water.
The twelve boats that escaped from the sea
fight never reached home again. They had no
compass to steer by, and the wind and tide drove
them to a far-off shore, where no man had ever
been. Here they settled, just as the island men
had done before, and grew into a new tribe
and people.
[275]
CHAPTER XX
THE SEA ROVERS
MOR and his men at last made up their minds
to sail out across the Great Water and see what
was on the other side. The island people were
very strong and brave, and thought it much bet-
ter to fight and have adventures, than to stay at
home in peace all the time. So they made ready
a fleet of twenty large boats, each one big enough
to hold forty men, and one bright morning, with
the wind blowing straight across the water, they
raised their coloured sails, red, and blue, and yel-
low, and set out.
Each man carried with him a wicker shield,
covered with tough hide, which he hung over the
side of the boat within easy reach of where he sat
at his oar. Many wore rings of gold and copper
and tin about their arms. Their caps were made
of leather, with the wings of birds in them, one
on each side. They carried bows and arrows,
[276]
THE SEA ROVERS
long spears with points of polished flint, or cop-
per, and stone axes and knives. Some of the
chiefs had axes with heads of copper.
They took water with them in great bottles
made of the skins of animals, and plenty of
smoked meat and fish. When they set sail, hun-
dreds came down to the shore to see them off.
Mor, a big strong man, almost a giant, waved his
glittering copper axe in farewell, then turned his
eyes toward the sea and led his little fleet out of
the bay on its journey.
For a day and a night they sailed without see-
ing anything but a few birds. Some of the men,
when they saw nothing but the ocean in every
direction, as far as the eye could reach, were
frightened and wanted to turn back, but Mor told
them to wait, that they would soon reach land.
On the afternoon of the second day one of the
men on watch gave a cry, and soon they saw
stretching along the horizon a thin grey line of
shore. A little later they could make out hills,
and clumps of trees, and the smoke from
a village.
It was evening and the people of the village
[277]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
were cooking supper about their fires. Mor led
his boats into a little cove some distance away,
and as soon as they grounded on the sand he and
his men sprang ashore. Five men were left in
each boat, to guard it, and the others, nearly
seven hundred in all, with Mor at their head,
went to attack the village.
The village men had sprung for their bows and
spears as soon as they saw Mor's ships Hearing
the land, and were now drawn up in front of the
village, ready to defend it. The two sides rushed
at each other, shouting fierce cries. A shower of
arrows and stones met Mor and his men, but the
tough hides of their shields kept them from being
much hurt, and not many were lost. The village
people, who did not have any shields, suffered
very much, and many of them fell.
Their chief, a huge man as big as Mor, came
out, carrying a heavy spear, and he and Mor
began a terrible fight. The village chief aimed a
heavy blow at Mor with his spear, but Mor
caught it on his shield. When the sharp stone
point of the spear cut through the shield it got
caught in the wickerwork, and would not come
[278]
THE SEA ROVERS
out. Then Mor jerked his shield back and pulled
the spear clear out of his enemy's hand. The
village chief drew a knife, but Mor rushed at him
and killed him with his copper axe.
At this the village people were discouraged,
and the men from the island set up a loud shout
and rushing at them, killed many of them. The
rest, seeing their leader killed, ran away. Then
Mor and his men went into the village and cap=
tured the women, and took great stores of grain,
and wine, and furs back to the ships. After that
they set the village on fire.
By this time the village people had secured
help, and were coming back to renew the fight,
so Mor called his men together, and guided by
the light from the blazing huts of the village, they
pushed their boats off the sand, sprang aboard,
and rowed swiftly away. In a little while they
had vanished in the darkness.
When they got back home, Mor and his men
had a feast, and all the people thought him
a hero. After that, he made many voyages, and
so did others of the island chiefs, and the people
of the mainland were afraid of them.
[279]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
These rovers of the sea were no more than
pirates, of course, but they did a great deal of
good. Year after year they would descend on the
people of the coast, burning and robbing, carry-
ing off their women and animals and taking them
back to their island home, but sometimes they
could not get back, but were driven by storms to
other lands, where they settled and built new
homes, taking with them all that they had learned
about metals, about building boats, and many
other things. In this way the knowledge they
had gained was spread to other peoples. Some-
times they would land in peace and trade with the
people on the mainland, giving them gold and
copper and tin in exchange for grain and cattle
and pottery. They sailed great distances in their
stout ships and not only learned the things that
other races knew, but at the same time brought
to these other peoples their own knowledge of
metal working, and carpentry, and the building
of boats. Thus, through these sea rovers, the dif-
ferent arts spread from tribe to tribe, and from
people to people, which was what Mother Na-
ture intended.
[280]
THE SEA ROVERS
When man discovered metals, and how to use
them, the Stone Age began to draw to a close.
There was of course no exact time when the use
of stone stopped, and the use of metals began, for
in some parts of the world men were using metals
for hundreds and even thousands of years, while
others, in other countries were still using stone.
When Columbus came to America, only a few
hundred years ago, the Indians in North Amer-
ica knew nothing of tools or weapons of metal,
they were still living in the Stone Age.
Another discovery which came about the same
time as the use of metals was the art of making
glass. Just when men began to use glass we do
not of course know, but in some of the most an-
cient tombs, along with weapons of copper, and
ornaments of gold, we find beads and other small
objects made of glass.
How it came to be discovered is another thing
we do not know, or by what race. It is very
likely that it was made by many different peo-
ples, at different times in the world's history.
Over and over we find that some race which had
gone far along the road to civilisation, would be
[281]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
swept away by savage tribes and its discoveries
lost for many centuries. We know this, because
sometimes we find, when digging in the earth, the
remains of savage peoples, with thick skulls and
rude weapons, and under these are the skulls and
polished weapons and ornaments of a much more
highly civilised race. The road which man fol-
lowed in his progress toward the civilisation we
have to-day did not run smoothly upward, like a
path up a hill, but dipped up and down and
around in many circles, always rising a little
higher, however, as the ages went by.
It is thought that the sea people first dis-
covered glass. Ordinary glass is made of lime,
soda-ash and sand, three very common sub-
stances. Because sand is the thing most needed
in making glass, we think it must have been dis-
covered by a people living on the seashore. It
must have been first made by accident, because
man could not have set out to discover something
he did not know anything about.
The most common story about the first glass
is that it was made by some sailors belonging to
the Phoenicians, one of the early sea-going tribes
[282]
THE SEA ROVERS
living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
It is supposed that these sailors, building a fire
on the seashore to cook food, may have propped
their pots up on pieces of limestone, which fur-
nished the lime, just as the beach furnished the
sand, and the fire, the ash and the heat. Prob-
ably they found in the ashes of their fire a hard,
greenish lump of glass. They did not know what
it was, of course, but carried it away because it
was clear and bright and pretty in colour, like a
jewel. Wiser men, hearing their story, may have
learned in this way how to mix sand, lime and
soda-ash together and by heating it form glass.
The earliest things made of glass were coarse
beads, and little bottles and vases. Later on,
man came to make very beautiful glass vases and
bowls and drinking cups, such as those found in
ancient tombs in Egypt, and in the ruins at Troy,
and on the Island of Cyprus. These cups and
bowls and other objects are tinted the most won-
derful colours, blue and green and gold, like the
feathers of a peacock. It is said that the ancient
Egyptians knew how to make glass that would
not break, so that a vase, dropped to the floor,
[283]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
instead of being shivered to pieces, would be only
bent out of shape. This secret, like the way the
Egyptians had of hardening and tempering cop-
per, has been lost, and the most skilful glass
makers to-day could not make glass like that.
[284]
CHAPTER XXI
THE END OF THE STONE AGE
DURING all these long centuries, many, many
thousands of years, the people from the valley
where Adh and his wife first lived had been
spreading far out over the surface of the earth.
Many boats and canoes, carried by storms from
the country of the sea people, were driven to
other countries, and all around the shores of the
sea new tribes were springing up. Century
after century, as these tribes became larger,
and game grew scarce, new bands of adventurers
wandered off into the wilderness inland, and from
the tribes they formed still other bands wandered
away. Some crossed great lakes and seas in
boats, others drifted down mighty rivers for hun-
dreds, and even thousands, of miles, on rafts.
Mountain ranges were crossed to find new hunt-
ing grounds, and new tribes were formed, which
in their turn sent out other bands of adventurers.
[285]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
During all this time the face of the earth was
changing. Great glaciers from the frozen north
crept southward century after century, grinding
the surface of the rocks like giant ploughs.
Earthquakes and floods caused new continents
to rise where before there had been only seas, or
made seas, in places where there had been dry
land. Mother Nature's new race of men had to
fight the heat and the cold, the storms and the
sea, as well as the fierce animals which were al-
ways ready to attack them, but in spite of all
these things, they spread and grew, year after
year, until the earth began to be covered
with them.
They did wonderful things with their tools of
stone. Remains of their work are found in many
places, tens of thousands of years old. On the
Island of Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, there
has been found an underground temple of great
size, with many arched and vaulted rooms, beauti-
fully carved, all of which were cut out of the
solid rock with axes and chisels of flint. In other
places wonderful temples, tombs and buildings
of various sorts have been discovered, built of
[286]
STONEHENGE
The ancient ruins in Wiltshire, England. Below, a diagram
showing their original construction.
[287]
THE END OF THE STONE AGE
great cut stones, and we wonder how such huge
rocks could ever have been squared and polished
so beautifully with nothing but tools of stone.
Mother Nature had been away for quite a long
time now, for she did not have to bother so much
about her children as she had at first. In every
direction she saw them following her great laws,
conquering the winds, the sea, the rivers, the
mountains, the plains, using the woods of the
forest, the fruits and grains of the fields, the
metals, the clay and the rocks to suit their needs.
North and South and East and West they spread
out, increasing year after year in accordance
with God's great laws.
When Mother Nature came back she looked
at the Sun and smiled.
'They have made a good beginning," she said.
"Is that only a beginning?" asked the Sun.
"Yes. So far they have hardly done anything
at all. But they are on the right track. With
every thousand years that go by they will learn
a little more, and some day, far in the future,
they will begin to be really civilised. That time
will come when they have conquered everything
[289J
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
else in the world, and begin to conquer them-
selves."
"Why is it," asked the Sun, "that some of
them, like the ones on the island, are going ahead
so fast, while others are still just savages?"
"It is because of the climate, and the kind of
country they live in. Look at those savages
down there in the hot jungle. All they have to
do is stretch out their hands and pick some nice
juicy fruit. There is always plenty for them to
eat, and it is so warm all the time they don't need
any clothes, or houses to live in, but can sleep in
the trees, or in little bamboo huts. They will
never learn to grow things, or to hunt animals
to eat. Life is so easy for them that they will
keep right on being savages for thousands of
years."
'They are getting brown and black," said the
Sun. "Why is that?"
"It is because they do not wear any clothes,
and the hot rays you are shining down on them
are turning their skins darker. Just look at
those people up there in the north, where your
rays are not so hot. They are getting lighter
[290]
THE END OF THE STONE AGE
and lighter all the time, their hair is getting yel-
low and their eyes hlue. They are stronger and
quicker, too, and they know much more. In
their cold country there is no food ready to be
eaten all the year round. They have to fight
very hard for a living, and this has made them
strong and brave and cunning."
"It is very wonderful," said the Sun.
"Look at those people by the seashore,"
Mother Nature went on. "See what splendid
fishermen and sailors they are getting to be. And
those strong hunters, who live in the mountains,
and those farmers, beginning to raise grain and
other things for food. Each tribe is learning dif-
ferent things, depending on its surroundings.
Soon those tribes on the plains will have great
herds of buff alo, and sheep and other animals, and
later on they will teach them to work, and to
carry them on their backs, and pull heavy loads.
They will use their milk for food, too, and the
wool and hair from their backs they will weave
into warm, strong cloth from which to make
clothing. After a while you will see these tribes
wandering thousands of miles with their flocks
[291]
THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN
and herds, going north in summer and south in
winter to find fresh grass for their animals.
The people will live in tents, and ride horses and
camels, and they will be called nomads."
"How are they going to catch these animals?"
asked the Sun.
"Some they will capture while very young.
For others they will make traps by digging pits
in the ground and covering them over with thin
rushes and grass. The animals will walk on the
rushes, thinking they are on solid ground, and
so fall into the pits, and be caught."
'These different peoples don't like each other,"
the Sun said. 'They fight whenever they meet."
"Yes," Mother Nature told him, with a sigh.
'The tribes that are strongest and know the most
must overcome those that are weak and lazy and
ignorant. It may seem to you a cruel law, but
it is a wise one, or God would never have made
it. He wants His people to grow stronger and
wiser and better all the time, and so you can see
that He has to let the ones that are wiser and
stronger go ahead, or the race would not make
any progress at all. It would never do to have
[292]
THE END OF THE STONE AGE
those splendid island people destroyed by those
lazy savages in the jungles. For a long time
Man will have to live by the law of force. It
cannot be helped. But some day, as I have al-
ready told you, he will throw this law aside, and
live by the law of love. It will take a long time,
Sun, but it will come. Meanwhile, watch my
little people carefully and you will see many
more wonderful things."
END OF VOLUME ONE
CENTKAL CIRCULATION
CHILDREN'S ROOM
[293]
