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 something that he at first thought was stone. It was yellow in colour, and very heavy. He laid it on a rock, and beat it with the head of his axe, expecting 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, because 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.
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, 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 wonderful 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.