The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

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 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 appeared 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 fishing 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. The hill men whom Ban had led to conquer the 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 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. Unless these could get into the bay, there was no way in which the men in them could climb up to the 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 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.