CHAPTER XLII.
As the cold continued and strengthened, and about all the animals had left the Cocoanut Hill region, the Ammi began to consider whether they also should not migrate. They had resisted the change of climate thus far by building mounds, adding to their clothing, and habitually using fire. (For they had given up their superstition about this element, to whom it long since ceased to be a God, and was now not even an animal.)
By these and similar devices they could live in the cold longer than other animals, and they made many improvements in their condition, which would have defied the weather had it been of an ordinary kind. But a glacial period had set in, which was to last, not for a winter, but for an age. The snow was falling that was to pile up in mountains, and to march for centuries over the land as glaciers, and no life could resist it; and hence, when they were satisfied that there was to be no thaw, or early return of warmth, they asked themselves whether they should not abandon their homes and their country.
“The cold has come to stay,” said Cocoanut-scooper, “and we cannot always dig for a living. The hogs and tapirs which excel us in rooting, have left, and we should not try to live where a hog can’t.”
“Our fingers and toes are frozen,” said Gimbo, “and if we don’t soon get away we will have nothing to walk away with.”
“How do we know,” asked Koree, “that we will find it better elsewhere?”
“I notice,” replied Abroo, “that none of the birds or beasts that go are ever seen to come back, and they all go one way.”
“Perhaps they are frozen, and can’t return through the snow,” remarked Koree.
“The birds, which do not have to walk, do not come back any more than the beasts,” retorted Abroo.