[1]The slice given in Fig. 64 is from a broader-leaved form,U. lactuca, because this species, being composed of only one layer of cells, is better seen.Ulva linzais composed of two layers of cells.
[1]The slice given in Fig. 64 is from a broader-leaved form,U. lactuca, because this species, being composed of only one layer of cells, is better seen.Ulva linzais composed of two layers of cells.
ornate capital p
ut away the telescopes and microscopes to-day, boys, the holidays are close at hand, and we will take a rest from peeping and peering till we come back in the autumn laden with specimens for the microscope, while the rapidly darkening evenings will tempt us again on to the lawn star-gazing. On this our last lecture-day I want you to take a journey with me which I took in imagination a few days ago, as I lay on my back on the sunny moor and watched the Dartmoor ponies.
It was a calm misty morning one day last week, giving promise of a bright and sunny day, when I started off for a long walk across the moor to visitthe famous stone-circles, many of which are to be found not far off the track, called Abbot's Way, leading from Buckfast Abbey, on the Dart, to the Abbey of Tavistock, on the Tavy.
My mind was full of the olden times as I pictured to myself how, seven hundred years or more ago, some Benedictine monk from Tavistock Abbey, in his black robe and cowl, paced this narrow path on his way to his Cistercian brethren at Buckfast, meeting some of them on his road as they wandered over the desolate moor in their white robes and black scapularies in search of stray sheep. For the Cistercians were shepherds and wool-weavers, while the Benedictines devoted themselves to learning, and the track of about twenty-five miles from one abbey to the other, which still remains, was worn by the members of the two communities and their dependents, the only variety in whose lives consisted probably in these occasional visits one to the other.
Yet even these monks belonged to modern times compared to the ancient Britons who raised the stone-circles, and buried their dead in the barrows scattered here and there over the moor; and my mind drifted back to the days when, long before that pathway was worn, men clad in the skins of beasts hunted wild animals over the ground on which I was treading, and lived in caves and holes of the ground.
I wondered, as I thought of them, whether the cultured monks and the uncivilised Britons delighted as much in the rugged scenery of the moor as I did that morning. For many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun wasshining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off thetors, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of the day.
The cattle which were scattered in groups here and there feeding on the dewy grass were enjoying the happiest time of the year. The moor, which in winter affords them scarcely a bare subsistence, is now richly covered with fresh young grass, and the sturdy oxen fed solemnly and deliberately, while the wild Dartmoor ponies and their colts scampered joyously along, shaking their manes and long flowing tails, and neighing to each other as they went; or clustered together on some verdant spot, where the colts teased and bit each other for fun, as they gambolled round their mothers.
It was a pleasure, there on the open moor, with the lark soaring overhead, and the butterflies and bees hovering among the sweet-smelling furze blossoms, to see horses free and joyous, with no thought of bit or bridle, harness or saddle, whose hoofs had never been handled by the shoeing-smith, nor their coats touched with the singeing iron. Those little colts, with their thick heads, shaggy coats, and flowing tails, will have at least two years more freedom before they know what it is to be driven or beaten. Only once a year are they gathered together, claimed by their owners and branded with an initial, and thenleft again to wander where they will. True, it is a freedom which sometimes has its drawbacks, for if the winter is severe the only food they can get will be the furze-tops, off which they scrape the snow with their feet; yet it is very precious in itself, for they can gallop when and where they choose, with head erect, sniffing at the wind and crying to each other for the very joy of life.
Now as I strolled across the moor and watched their gambols, thinking how like free wild animals they seemed, my thoughts roamed far away, and I saw in imagination scenes where other untamed animals of the horse tribe are living unfettered all their lives long.
First there rose before my mind the level grass-covered pampas of South America, where wild horses share the boundless plains with troops of the rhea, or American ostrich, and wander, each horse with as many mares as he can collect, in companies of hundreds or even thousands in a troop. These horses are now truly wild, and live freely from youth to age, unless they are unfortunate enough to be caught in the more inhabited regions by the lasso of the hunter. In the broad pampas, the home of herds of wild cattle, they dread nothing. There, as they roam with one bold stallion as their leader, even beasts of prey hesitate to approach them, for, when they form into a dense mass with the mothers and young in their centre, their heels deal blows which even the fierce jaguar does not care to encounter, and they trample their enemy to death in a very short time. Yet these are not the original wild horses weare seeking, they are the descendants of tame animals, brought from Europe by the Spaniards to Buenos Ayres in 1535, whose descendants have regained their freedom on the boundless pampas and prairies.
As I was picturing them careering over the plains, another scene presented itself and took their place. Now I no longer saw around me tall pampas-grass with the long necks of the rheas appearing above it, for I was on the edge of a dreary scantily covered plain between the Aral Sea and the Balkash Lake in Tartary. To the south lies a barren sandy desert, to the north the fertile plains of the Kirghiz steppes, where the Tartar feeds his flocks, and herds of antelopes gallop over the fresh green pasture; and between these is a kind of no-man's land, where low scanty shrubs and stunted grass seemed to promise but a poor feeding-ground.
Yet here the small long-legged but powerful "Tarpans," the wild horses of the treeless plains of Russia and Tartary, were picking their morning meal. Sturdy wicked little fellows they are, with their shaggy light-brown coats, short wiry manes, erect ears, and fiery watchful eyes. They might well be supposed to be true wild horses, whose ancestors had never been tamed by man; and yet it is more probable that even they escaped in early times from the Tartars, and have held their own ever since, over the grassy steppes of Russia and on the confines of the plains of Tartary. Sometimes they live almost alone, especially on the barren wastes where they have been seen in winter, scraping the snow off the herbage as our ponies do on Dartmoor. At othertimes, as in the south of Russia, where they wander between the Dnieper and the Don, they gather in vast herds and live a free life, not fearing even the wolves, which they beat to the ground with their hoofs. From one green oasis to another they travel over miles of ground.
"A thousand horse—and none to ride!With flowing tail, and flying mane,Wide nostrils—never stretch'd by pain,Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,And feet that iron never shod,And flanks unscarr'd by spur or rod.A thousand horse, the wild, the free,Like waves that follow o'er the sea."[1]
As I followed them in their course I fancied I saw troops of yet another animal of the horse tribe, the "Kulan," orEquus hemionus, which is a kind of half horse, half ass (Fig. 74), living on the Kirghiz steppes of Tartary and spreading far beyond the range of the Tarpan into Tibet. Here at last we have a truly wild animal, never probably brought into subjection by man. The number of names he possesses shows how widely he has spread. The Tartars call him "Kulan," the Tibetans "Kiang," while the Mongolians give him the unpronounceable name of "Dschiggetai." He will not submit to any of them, but if caught and confined soon breaks away again to his old life, a "free and fetterless creature."
Fig. 74.Fig. 74. Equus hemionus, "Kiang" or "Kulan," the Horse-ass of Tartary and Tibet. (Brehm.)Equus hemionus, "Kiang" or "Kulan," the Horse-ass of Tartary and Tibet. (Brehm.)
No one has ever yet settled the question whether he is a horse or an ass, probably because he represents an animal truly between the two. His head is graceful, his body light, his legs slender and fleet, yet his ears are long and ass-like; he has narrow hoofs, and a tail with a tuft at the end like all the ass tribe; his colour is a yellow brown, and he has a short dark mane and a long dark stripe down his back as a donkey has, though this last character you may also see in many of our Devonshire ponies. Living often on the high plateaux, sometimes as much as 1500 feet above the sea, this "child of the steppes" travels in large companies even as far as the rich meadows of Central Asia; in summer wandering in green pastures, and in winter seeking the hunger-steppes where sturdy plants grow. And when autumn comes the young steeds go off alone to the mountain heights to survey the country around andcall wildly for mates, whom, when found, they will keep close to them through all the next year, even though they mingle with thousands of others.
Fig. 75.Fig. 75. Przevalsky's Wild Horse, the "Kertag" or "Statur."Przevalsky's Wild Horse, the "Kertag" or "Statur."
Till about ten years ago theEquus hemionuswas the only truly wild horse known, but in the winter of 1879-80 the Russian traveller Przevalsky brought back from Central Asia a much more horse-like animal, called by the Tartars "Kertag" and by the Mongols "Statur." It is a clumsy, thick-set, whitish-gray creature with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-coloured head; its legs have a red tint down to the knees, beyond which they are blackish down to the hoofs. But the ears are small, and it has the broad hoofs of the true horse, and warts on his hind legs, which no animal of the ass tribe has. This horse, like the Kiang, travels in small troops of from five to fifteen, led through the wildest parts ofthe Dsungarian desert, between the Altai and Tianschan Mountains, by an old stallion. They are extremely shy, and see, hear, and smell very quickly, so that they are off like lightning whenever anything approaches them.
So having travelled over America, Europe, and Asia, was my quest ended? No; for from the dreary Asiatic deserts my thoughts wandered to a far warmer and more fertile land, where between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea rise the lofty highlands of Abyssinia, among which the African wild ass (Asinus tæniopus), the probable ancestor of our donkeys, feeds in troops on the rich grasses of the slopes, and then onwards to the bank of a river in Central Africa where on the edge of a forest, with rich pastures beyond, elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes and buffaloes, lions and hyænas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. There I saw the herds of Zebras in all their striped beauty coming down from the mountain regions to the north, and mingling with the darker-coloured but graceful quaggas from the southern plains, and I half-grieved at the thought how these untamed and free rovers are being slowly but surely surrounded by man closing in upon them on every side.
I might now have travelled still farther in search of the Onager, or wild ass of the Asiatic and Indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented itself, as I flung myself down on the moor to ponder over the early history of all these tribes.
Where have they all come from? Where shallwe look for the first ancestors of these wild and graceful animals? For the answer to this question I had to travel back to America, to those Western United States where Professor Marsh has made such grand discoveries in horse history. For there, in the very country where horses were supposed never to have been before the Spaniards brought them a few centuries ago, we have now found the true birthplace of the equine race.
Come back with me to a time so remote that we cannot measure it even by hundreds of thousands of years, and let us visit the territories of Utah and Wyoming. Those highlands were very different then from what they are now. Just risen out of the seas of the Cretaceous Period, they were then clothed with dense forests of palms, tree-ferns, and screw-pines, magnolias and laurels, interspersed with wide-spreading lakes, on the margins of which strange and curious animals fed and flourished. There were large beasts with teeth like the tapir and the bear, and feet like the elephant; and others far more dangerous, half bear, half hyæna, prowling around to attack the clumsy paleotherium or the anoplotherium, something between a rhinoceros and a horse, which grazed by the waterside, while graceful antelopes fed on the rich grass. And among these were some little animals no bigger than foxes, with four toes and a splint for the fifth, on their front feet, and three toes on the hind ones.
These clumsy little animals, whose bones have been found in the rocks of Utah and Wyoming,have been calledEohippus, or horses of the dawn, by naturalists. They were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they belonged to the horse tribe, and already the fifth toe common to most other toed animals was beginning to disappear.
This was in the Eocene period, and before it passed away with its screw-pines and tree-ferns, another rather larger animal, called theOrohippus, had taken the place of the small one, and he had only four toes on his front feet. The splint had disappeared, and as time went on still other animals followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. First one as large as a sheep (Mesohippus) had only three toes and a splint. Then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock of a horse's skeleton.
The diagram (Fig 76) shows these splints in the horse's or ass's foot of to-day. For you must notice that a horse's foot really begins at the pointwwhich we call his knee in the front legs, and at his hockhin the hind legs. His true kneekand elboweare close up to the body. What we call his foot or hoof is really the end of the strong, broad, middle toetcovered with a hoof, and farther up his foot atsandswe can feel two small splints, which are remains of two other toes.
Meanwhile during these long succeeding ages while the foot was lengthening out into a slenderlimb the animals became larger, more powerful, and more swift, the neck and head became longer and more graceful, the brain-case larger in front and the teeth decreased in number, so that there is now a large gap between the biting teethiand the grinding teethgof a horse. Their slender limbs too became more flexible and fit for running and galloping, till we find the whole skeleton the same in shape, though not in size, as in our own horses and asses now.
Fig. 76.Fig. 76. Skeleton of Horse or Ass. i, Incisor teeth. g, Grinding teeth, with the gap between the two as in all grass-feeders. k, Knee. h, Hock or heel. f, Foot. s, Splints or remains of the two lost toes. e, Elbow. w, Wrist. ha, Hand-bone. t, middle toe of three joints, 1, 2, 3 forming the hoof.Skeleton of Horse or Ass.i, Incisor teeth.g, Grinding teeth, with the gap between the two as in all grass-feeders.k, Knee.h, Hock or heel.f, Foot.s, Splints or remains of the two lost toes.e, Elbow.w, Wrist.ha, Hand-bone.t, middle toe of three joints, 1, 2, 3 forming the hoof.
i, Incisor teeth.g, Grinding teeth, with the gap between the two as in all grass-feeders.k, Knee.h, Hock or heel.f, Foot.s, Splints or remains of the two lost toes.e, Elbow.w, Wrist.ha, Hand-bone.t, middle toe of three joints, 1, 2, 3 forming the hoof.
They did not, however, during all this time remain confined to America, for, from the time when they arrived at an animal calledMiohippus, or lesserhorse, which came after the Mesohippus and had only three toes on each foot, we find their remains in Europe, where they lived in company with the giraffes, opossums, and monkeys which roamed over these parts in those ancient times. Then a little later we find them in Africa and India; so that the horse tribe, represented by creatures about as large as donkeys, had spread far and wide over the world.
And now, curiously enough, they began to forsake, or to die out in, the land of their birth. Why they did so we do not know; but while in the old world as asses, quaggas, and zebras, and probably horses, they flourished in Asia, Europe, and Africa, they certainly died out in America, so that ages afterwards, when that land was discovered, no animal of the horse tribe was found in it.
And the true horse, where did he arise? Born and bred probably in Central Asia from some animal like the "Kulan," or the "Kertag," he proved too useful to savage tribes to be allowed his freedom, and it is doubtful whether in any part of the world he escaped subjection. In our own country he probably roamed as a wild animal till the savages, who fed upon him, learned in time to put him to work; and when the Romans came they found the Britons with fine and well-trained horses.
Yet though tamed and made to know his master he has, as we have seen, broken loose again in almost all parts of the world—in America on the prairies and pampas, in Europe and Asia on the steppes, and in Australia in the bush. And even in Great Britain, where so few patches of uncultivatedland still remain, the young colts of Dartmoor, Exmoor, and Shetland, though born of domesticated mothers, seem to assert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the Kulan, the Tarpan, and the Zebra do in the wild desert or grassy plain.
[1]Byron'sMazeppa.
[1]Byron'sMazeppa.
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he magician sat in his armchair in the one little room in the house which was his, and his only, besides the observatory. And a strange room it was. The walls were hung with skulls and bones of men and animals, with swords, daggers, and shields, coats of mail, and bronze spear-heads. The drawers, many of which stood open, contained flint-stones chipped and worn, arrowheads of stone, jade hatchets beautifully polished, bronze buckles and iron armlets; while scattered among these were pieces of broken pottery, some rough and only half-baked, others beautifully finished, as the Romans knew how to finish them. Rough needles made of bone lay beside bronze knives with richly-ornamented handles and, most precious of all, on the table by the magician's side lay a reindeer antler, on whichwas roughly carved the figure of the reindeer itself.
He had been enjoying a six weeks' holiday, and he had employed it in visiting some of the bone caves of Europe to learn about the men who lived in them long, long ago. He had been to the south of France to see the famous caves of the Dordogne, to Belgium to the caves of Engis and Engihoul, to the Hartz Mountains and to Hungary. Then hastening home he had visited the chief English caves in Yorkshire, Wales, and Devonshire.
Now that he had returned to his college, his mind was so full of facts, that he felt perplexed how to lay before his class the wonderful story of the life of man before history began. And as the day was hot, and the very breeze which played around him made him feel languid and sleepy, he fell into a reverie—a waking dream.
First the room faded from his sight, then the trim villages disappeared; the homesteads, the corn-fields, the grazing cattle, all were gone, and he saw the whole of England covered with thick forests and rough uncultivated land. From the mountains in the north, glaciers were to be seen creeping down the valleys between dense masses of fir and oak, pine and birch; while the wild horse, the bison, and the Irish elk were feeding on the plains. As he looked southward and eastward he saw that the sea no longer washed the shores, for the English and Irish Channels were not yet scooped out. The British Isles were still part of the continent of Europe, so that animals could migrate overland from the farsouth, up to what is now England, Scotland, and Ireland. Many of these animals, too, were very different from any now living in the country, for in the large rivers of England he saw the hippopotamus playing with her calf, while elephants and rhinoceroses were drinking at the water's edge. Yet these strange creatures did not have all the country to themselves—wolves, bears, and foxes prowled in the woods, large beavers built their dams across the streams, and here and there over the country human beings were living in caves and holes of the earth.
It was these men chiefly who attracted the magician's attention, and being curious to know how they lived, he turned towards a cave, at the mouth of which was a group of naked children who were knocking pieces of flint together, trying to strike off splinters and make rough flint tools, such as they saw their fathers use. Not far off from them a woman with a wild beast's skin round her waist was gathering firewood, another was grubbing up roots, and another, venturing a little way into the forest, was searching for honey in the hollows of the tree trunks.
All at once in the dusk of the evening a low growl and a frightened cry were heard, and the women rushed towards the cave as they saw near the edge of the forest a huge tiger with sabre-shaped teeth struggling with a powerful stag. In vain the deer tried to stamp on his savage foe or to wound him with his antlers; the strong teeth of the tiger had penetrated his throat, and they fell struggling together as the stag uttered his death-cry. Just atthat moment loud shouts were heard in the forest, and the frightened women knew that help was near.
Fig. 77.Fig. 77. Palæolithic times.Palæolithic times.
One after another, several men, clothed in skins hung over one shoulder and secured round the waist, rushed out of the thicket, their hair streaming in the wind, and ran towards the tiger. They held in their hands strange weapons made of rough pointed flints fastened into handles by thongs of skin, and as the tiger turned upon them with a cry of rage they met him with a rapid shower of blows. The fight ragedfiercely, for the beast was strong and the weapons of the men were rude, but the tiger lay dead at last by the side of his victim. His skin and teeth were the reward of the hunters, and the stag he had killed became their prey.
How skilfully they hacked it to pieces with their stone axes, and then loading it upon their shoulders set off up the hill towards the cave, where they were welcomed with shouts of joy by the women and children!
Fig. 78.Fig. 78. Palæolithic relics. 1, Bone needle, from a cave at La Madeleine, ½ size. 2, Tooth of Machairodus or sabre-toothed tiger, from Kent's Cavern, ½ size. 3, Rough stone implement, from Kent's Cavern, ¼ size.Palæolithic relics.1, Bone needle, from a cave at La Madeleine, ½ size. 2, Tooth of Machairodus or sabre-toothed tiger, from Kent's Cavern, ½ size. 3, Rough stone implement, from Kent's Cavern, ¼ size.
1, Bone needle, from a cave at La Madeleine, ½ size. 2, Tooth of Machairodus or sabre-toothed tiger, from Kent's Cavern, ½ size. 3, Rough stone implement, from Kent's Cavern, ¼ size.
Then began the feast. First fires were kindled slowly and with difficulty by rubbing a sharp-pointed stick in a groove of softer wood till the wood-dust burst into flame; then a huge pile was lighted at the mouth of the cave to cook the food and keep off wild beasts. How the food was cooked the magician could not see, but he guessed that the flesh was cut off the bones and thrust in the glowing embers, and he watched the men afterwards splitting open the uncooked bones to suck out the raw marrow which savages love.
After the feast was over he noticed how they leftthese split bones scattered upon the floor of the cave mingling with the sabre-shaped teeth of the tiger, and this reminded him of the bones of the stag and the tiger's tooth which he had found in Kent's Cavern in Devonshire only a few days before.
By this time the men had lain down to sleep, and in the darkness strange cries were heard from the forest. The roar of the lion, mingled with the howling of the wolves and the shrill laugh of the hyænas, told that they had come down to feed on the remains of the tiger. But none of these animals ventured near the glowing fire at the mouth of the cavern, behind which the men slept in security till the sun was high in the heavens. Then all was astir again, for weapons had been broken in the fight, and some of the men sitting on the ground outside the cave placed one flint between their knees, and striking another sharply against it drove off splinters, leaving a pointed end and cutting edge. They spoiled many before they made one to their liking, and the entrance to the cave was strewn with splintered fragments and spoilt flints, but at last several useful stones were ready. Meanwhile another man, taking his rude stone axe, set to work to hew branches from the trees to form handles, while another, choosing a piece remaining of the body of the stag, tore a sinew from the thigh, and threading it through the large eye of the bone needle, stitched the tiger's skin roughly together into a garment.
"This, then," said the magician to himself, "is how ancient man lived in the summer-time, but how would he fare when winter came?" As he musedthe scene gradually changed. The glaciers crept far lower down the valleys, and the hills, and even the lower ground, lay thick in snow. The hippopotamus had wandered away southward to warmer climes, as animals now migrate over the continent of America in winter, and with him had gone the lion, the southern elephant, and other summer visitors. In their place large herds of reindeer and shaggy oxen had come down from the north and were spread over the plains, scraping away the snow with their feet to feed on the grass beneath. The mammoth, too, or hairy elephant, of the same extinct species as those which have been found frozen in solid ice under a sandbank in Siberia, had come down to feed, accompanied by the woolly rhinoceros; and scattered over the hills were the curious horned musk-sheep, which have long ago disappeared off the face of the earth. Still, bitterly cold as it was, the hunter clad in his wild-beast skin came out from time to time to chase the mammoth, the reindeer, and the oxen for food, and cut wood in the forest to feed the cavern fires.
This time the magician's thoughts wandered down to the south-west of France, where, on the banks of a river in that part now called the Dordogne, a number of caves not far from each other formed the home of savage man. Here he saw many new things, for the men used arrows of deer-horn and of wood pointed with flint, and with these they shot the birds, which were hovering near in hopes of finding food during the bitter weather. By the side of the river a man was throwing a small dart ofdeer-horn fastened to a cord of sinews, with which from time to time he speared a large fish and drew it to the bank.
Fig. 79.Fig. 79. Mammoth engraved on ivory by Palæolithic man.Mammoth engraved on ivory by Palæolithic man.
But the most curious sight of all, among such a rude people, was a man sitting by the glowing fire at the mouth of one of the caves scratching a piece of reindeer horn with a pointed flint, while the children gathered round him to watch his work. What was he doing? See! gradually the rude scratches began to take shape, and two reindeer fighting together could be recognised upon the horn handle. This he laid carefully aside, and taking a piece of ivory, part of the tusk of a mammoth, he worked away slowly and carefully till the children grew tired of watching and went off to play behind the fire. Then the magician, glancing over his shoulder, saw a true figure of the mammoth scratched upon the ivory, his hairy skin, long mane, and up-curved tusks distinguishing him from all elephants living now. "Ah," exclaimed the magician aloud, "that is the drawing on ivory found in the cave of La Madeleine in Dordogne, proving that man existed ages ago, and evenknew how to draw figures, at a time when the mammoth, or hairy elephant, long since extinct, was still living on the earth!"
With these words he started from his reverie, and knew that he had been dreaming of Palæolithic man who, with his tools of rough flints, had lived in Europe so long ago that his date cannot be fixed by years, or centuries, or even thousands of years. Only this is known, that, since he lived, the mammoth, the sabre-toothed tiger, the cave-bear, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-hyæna, the musk-sheep, and many other animals have died out from off the face of the earth; the hippopotamus and the lion have left Europe and retired to Africa, and the sea has flowed in where land once was, cutting off Great Britain and Ireland from the continent.
How long all these changes were in taking place no one knows. When the magician drifted back again into his dream the land had long been desolate, and the hyænas, which had always taken possession of the caves whenever the men deserted them for awhile, had now been undisturbed for a long time, and had left on the floor of the cave gnawed skulls and bones, and jaws of animals, more or less scored with the marks of their teeth, and these had become buried in a thick layer of earth. The magician knew that these teeth marks had been made by hyænas, both because living hyænas leave exactly such marks on bones in the present day, and because the hyæna bones alone were not gnawed, showing that no animals preyed upon their flesh. He knew too that the hyænas had been there long afterman had ceased to use the caves, because no flint tools were found among the bones. But now the age of hyænas, too, was past and gone, and the caves had been left so long undisturbed that in many of them the water dripping from the roof had left film after film of carbonate of lime upon the floor, which as the centuries went by became a layer of stalagmite many feet thick, sealing down the secrets of the past.
The face of the country was now entirely changed. The glaciers were gone, and so, too, were all the strange animals. True, the reindeer, the wild ox, and even here and there the Irish elk, were still feeding in the valleys; wolves and bears still made the country dangerous, and beavers built their dams across the streams, which were now much smaller than formerly, and flowed in deeper channels, carved out by water during the interval; but the elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and tigers were gone never to return, and near the caves in which some of the people lived, and the rude underground huts which formed the homes of others, tame sheep and goats were lying with dogs to watch them. Also, though the land was still covered with dense forests, yet here and there small clearings had been made, where patches of corn and flax were growing. Naked children still played about as before, but now they were moulding cups of clay like those in which food was being cooked on the fire outside the caves or huts. Some of the women, dressed partly in skins of beasts, partly in rough woven linen, were spinningflax into thread, using as a spinning-whorl a small round stone with a hole in the middle tied to the end of the flax, as a weight to enable them to twirl it. Others were grinding corn in the hollow of a large stone by rubbing another stone within it.
Fig. 80.Fig. 80. Neolithic implements. 1, Stone hatchet mounted in wood. 2, Jade celt, a polished stone weapon, from Livermore in Suffolk, ¼ size. 3, Spindle whorl, ½ size.Neolithic implements.1, Stone hatchet mounted in wood. 2, Jade celt, a polished stone weapon, from Livermore in Suffolk, ¼ size. 3, Spindle whorl, ½ size.
1, Stone hatchet mounted in wood. 2, Jade celt, a polished stone weapon, from Livermore in Suffolk, ¼ size. 3, Spindle whorl, ½ size.
The men, while they still spent much time in hunting, had now other duties in tending the sheep and goats, or looking after the hogs as they turned up the ground in the forest for roots, or sowing and reaping their crops. Yet still all the tools were made of stone, no longer rough and merely chipped like the old stone weapons, but neatly cut and polished. Stone axes with handles of deer-horn, stone spears and javelins, stone arrowheads beautifully finished, sling-stones and scrapers, were among their weapons and tools, and with them they made many delicate implements of bone. On the broad lakes which here and there broke the monotony of the forests, canoes, made of the trunks of treeshollowed out by fire, were being paddled by one man, while another threw out his fishing line armed with delicate bone-hooks; and on the banks of the lakes, nets weighted with drilled stones tied on to the meshes were dragged up full of fish.
For these Neolithic men, or men of the New Stone Period, who used polished stone weapons, were farmers and shepherds and fishermen. They knew how to make rude pottery, and kept domestic animals. Moreover, they either came from the east or exchanged goods by barter with tribes living more to the eastward, now that canoes enabled them to cross the sea; for many of their weapons were made of greenstone or jade, and of other kinds of stone not to be found in Europe, and their sheep and goats were animals of eastern origin. They understood how to unite to protect their homes, for they made underground huts by digging down several feet into the ground and roofing the hole over with wood coated with clay; and often long passages underground united these huts, while in many places on the hills, camps, made of ramparts of earth surrounded by ditches, served as strongholds for the women and children and the flocks and herds, when some neighbouring tribe attacked their homesteads.
Still, however, where caves were ready to hand they used them for houses, and the same shelter which had been the home of the ancient hunters, now resounded with the voices of the shepherds, who, treading on the sealed floor, little dreamt that under their feet lay the remains of a bygone age.
Fig. 81.Fig. 81. A burial in Neolithic times.A burial in Neolithic times.
And now, as our dreamer watched this new race of men fashioning their weapons, feeding their oxen, and hunting the wild stag, his attention was arrested by a long train of people crossing a neighbouring plain, weeping and wailing as they went. At the head of this procession, lying on a stretcher made of tree-boughs, lay a dead chieftain, and as the line moved on, men threw down their tools, and women their spinning, and joined the throng. On they went to where two upright slabs of stone with another laid across them formed the opening to a long mound or chamber. Into this the bearerspassed with lighted torches, and in a niche ready prepared placed the dead chieftain in a sitting posture with the knees drawn up, placing by his side his flint spear and polished axe, his necklace of shells, and the bowl from which he had fed. Then followed the funeral feast, when, with shouts and wailing, fires were lighted, and animals slaughtered and cooked, while the chieftain was not forgotten, but portions were left for his use, and then the earth was piled up again around the mouth of the chamber, till it should be opened at some future time to place another member of his family by his side, or till in after ages the antiquary should rifle his resting-place to study the mode of burial in the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age.
Time passed on in the magician's dream, and little by little the caves were entirely deserted as men learnt to build huts of wood and stone. And as they advanced in knowledge they began to melt metals and pour them into moulds, making bronze knives and hatchets, swords and spears; and they fashioned brooches and bracelets of bronze and gold, though they still also used their necklaces of shells and their polished stone weapons. They began, too, to keep ducks and fowls, cows and horses; they knew how to weave in looms, and to make cloaks and tunics; and when they buried their dead it was no longer in a crouching position. They laid them decently to rest, as if in sleep, in the barrows where they are found to this day with bronze weapons by their side.
Then as time went on they learnt to melt even hard iron, and to beat it into swords and plough-shares,and they lived in well-built huts with stone foundations. Their custom of burial, too, was again changed, and they burnt their dead, placing the ashes in a funeral urn.
Fig. 82.Fig. 82. British relics. 1, A coin of the age of Constantine. 2, Bronze weapon from a Suffolk barrow. 3, Bronze bracelet from Liss in Hampshire.British relics.1, A coin of the age of Constantine. 2, Bronze weapon from a Suffolk barrow. 3, Bronze bracelet from Liss in Hampshire.
1, A coin of the age of Constantine. 2, Bronze weapon from a Suffolk barrow. 3, Bronze bracelet from Liss in Hampshire.
By this time the Britons, as they were now called, had begun to gather together in villages and towns, and the Romans ruled over them. Now when men passed through the wild country they were often finely dressed in cloth tunics, wearing arm rings of gold, some even driving in war-chariots, carrying shields made of wickerwork covered with leather. Still many of the country people who laboured in the field kept their old clothing of beast skins; they grew their corn and stored it in cavities of the rocks; they made basket-work boats covered with skin, in which they ventured out to sea. So things went on for a long period till at last a troubled time came, and the quiet valleys were disturbed by wandering people who fledfrom the towns and took refuge in the forests; for the Romans after three hundred and fifty years of rule had gone back home to Italy, and a new and barbarous people called the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, came over the sea from Jutland and drove the Britons from their homes.
Fig. 83.Fig. 83. Britons taking refuge in the Cave.Britons taking refuge in the Cave.
And so once more the caves became the abode of man, for the harassed Britons brought what few things they could carry away from their houses and hid themselves there from their enemies. How little they thought, as they lay down to sleep on the cavern floor, that beneath them lay the remains oftwo ages of men! They knew nothing of the woman who had dropped her stone spindle-whorl into the fire, on which the food of Neolithic man had been cooking in rough pots of clay; they never dug down to the layer of gnawed bones, nor did they even in their dreams picture the hyæna haunting his ancient den, for a hyæna was an animal they had never seen. Still less would they have believed that at one time, countless ages before, their island had been part of the continent, and that men, living in the cave where they now lay, had cut down trees with rough flints, and fought with such unknown animals as the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger.
But the magician saw it all passing before him, even as he also saw these Britons carrying into the cave their brooches, bracelets, and finger rings, their iron spears and bronze daggers, and all their little household treasures which they had saved in their flight. And among these, mingling in the heap, he recognised Roman coins bearing the inscription of the Emperor Constantine, and he knew that it was by these coins that he had, a few days before in Yorkshire, been able to fix the date of the British occupation of a cave.
And with this his dream ended, and he found himself clutching firmly the horn on which Palæolithic man had engraved the figure of the reindeer. He rose, and stretching himself crossed the sunny grass plot of the quadrangle and entered his classroom. The boys wondered as he began his lectureat the far-away look in his eyes. They did not know how he had passed through a vision of countless ages; but that afternoon, for the first time, they realised, as he unfolded scene after scene, the history of "The Men of Ancient Days."