THE MAGICIAN'S DREAM OF ANCIENT DAYS.
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 which was 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 far south, 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 at that moment loud shouts were heard in the forest, and the frightened women knew that help was near.
Fig. 77.