“But I beseech thee, O, learned Poly-dotto,” I continued, “impart to me the secret of all this! Unfold to me the origin of this most wonderful system of writing whereby the wisdom of ages may be recorded in one small volume!”
Poly-dotto glanced at the king, who bowed his head in sign of his royal consent that the aged sage might speak.
“Where we now stand,” began Poly-dotto, tossing back the long tufts of white hair which reached from his ears to his shoulders, “was once a rugged and mountainous country. In those days, now some thirty thousand years ago, our people were more like thine than at present. To climb the rocky sides of these mountains required long, sinewy arms and strong hands of great grasping power, and flexible legs, moving quite independently of each other, like mountaineers in all lands. But, all of a sudden, these rock-crested heights began to sink and the valleys to rise; true, very slowly and gradually, but yet uninterruptedly, so that in a few years, what had been a rough, broken country, ridged and wrinkled, began to take on the aspect of a perfectly level land. With these changes our people began to change.
“Having no longer any use for hands of iron grip and arms of tireless muscles, they were not long in finding out that this strength was leaving them, that their great breadth of shoulder and depth of chest were slowly but surely disappearing in their sons and grandsons. By a strange fatality, about this time, a terrible flood passed over our luckless land. Our panic-stricken people had just time enough to escape. For several months the regions once inhabited by a contented little nation were covered by water many fathoms deep. When, at last, the waters had subsided, and our ancestors were permitted to set foot again on their native soil, what a change met their eyes! This vast domain of our gracious master, King Gâ-roo—the Thousandth, had become as you now see it, a perfectly level plain, net-worked by the countless narrow but deep and swift-rolling streams. But the soil brought in the arms, so to speak, of these raging waters and cast upon our houses, burying them far beneath, was of most extraordinary fertility, just as you see it now. Every manner of plant, fruit, flower, vegetable and grain grows here without cultivation when once planted. Our people were not slow to take advantage of Nature’s kindness and build up once more the happy homes destroyed by the flood. But now we were brought face to face with a most wonderful state of things. Here we were shut in, surrounded by a vast network of streams, and yet taught by our terrible experience so to dread water, that not even to escape from death itself could our people be induced to swim across one of these little rivers or pass over it in any sort of boat. Time went on. It was either a question of living on these long narrow necks of land, and walking scores of miles to pass around the bends and curves of the streams, or else jump over them. Our wise men issued instructions to our forefathers, telling them how from early childhood they must train their little ones to leap, encouraging them by rewards to keep up the practice until leaping became as easy to them as walking and running had been. The royal ancestors of our most gracious master enacted most stringent laws against walking and running. In a few generations great changes took place. It was not an unusual thing to see a child of eight or ten leap six or eight feet over rivulets while playing some game like your hide and seek. As these child-hoppers increased in years, their power of leaping soon led them to see that they could advance much more rapidly by jumping than by the ancient, toilsome way of setting first one and then the other foot forward.
“The streams now widened, putting the leaping powers of our people to severe tests. But we overcame every obstacle, and in a few generations it became a rare thing indeed to see a Umi-Loba moving about in the ancient manner. As you may easily imagine, Nature could not furnish vigor enough to enable our people to transform themselves in this manner, and at the same time preserve their length, strength and power of shoulders, arms and hands. A most astonishing result showed itself. What was gained below was lost above. Our people’s arms began to grow flabby; their hands took on a delicate and nerveless appearance, as if a long illness had bleached and softened them. Then the wise men of our nation noticed another change. After a certain age, the arms of our children ceased growing entirely, and although our physicians made extraordinary efforts to overcome this sudden stoppage of growth, which usually occurred when our children reached their tenth year, yet all their exertions were of no avail.
“Our king, to his great dismay, saw growing up about him a race of young men whose arms were so short, and whose hands were so small and delicate, that they could no longer wield the spears and bows and arrows of our forefathers. Even the knives and forks and drinking cups had to be made smaller and smaller as these wonderful changes came about.
“And not long, too, was it before our wise men found it utterly impossible to hold and guide the long, heavy pens of their ancestors, or to lift the ponderous volumes in which our fathers had kept the records of our nation.
“With smaller pens came smaller books, and finer writing, until at last one of my ancestors, in a moment of happy inspiration, conceived the idea of giving up the ancient way of writing by means of two score or more of letters, so large that only a few of them could be written upon one line, and of which two or three were necessary in order to record one simple sound, and of using little dots and strokes as fine as hairs, to represent the sound of our words.
“Our children were delighted.
“Their short arms and tiny hands were well fitted for such work.