“The Gaels hunted the elk also, a kind of large stag the size of a horse or even larger. The elk has under its throat a kind of goiter or fleshy pendant; its fur is short, stiff, and ash-colored; its horns, called antlers, are wide-spreading and flattened, and they extend in a vast triangular expanse with a deeply indented outline; the weight of each antler may amount to as much as thirty kilograms. That must, as you see, be a fine specimen of game: an animal that bears on its forehead, without effort, an ornament weighing a hundred weight and more.”
“A stag as large as a horse must really be a noble prize for a hunter,” said Louis.
“Without his companion, the dog,” Jules put in, “man certainly could not have caught such an animal in the chase.”
“The elk,” resumed Uncle Paul, “though common at that period in our forests, is found to-day only in the wooded marshes of Russia and Sweden. It also inhabits, and in greater numbers, the northern part of America.
“You will notice that these two animals, the aurochs [[171]]and the elk, which were formerly spread over our own regions, are now settled in climates much colder than ours. The few aurochs that have survived the general destruction of their species graze in the woods of Lithuania; the elk inhabits the extreme north of Europe and America. Transported to our warmer climate, they would soon perish, being unable to endure a temperature too high for them. Since they flourished here in ancient times, the climate of our regions must at that distant epoch have been colder, more severe, than it is to-day. Immense forests, always damp and full of shade, were doubtless one of the causes of this more rigorous climate. When these woods, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, were felled by the ax of nascent civilization, the soil warmed up freely and the temperature rose. But then the aurochs and elk, harassed besides by man, who explored all their retreats, fled a country too warm for them and took refuge in the cold fogs of the North.
“Despite this change of climate some animals have remained with us the same as in the old time of the Gaels. In our day the same wolf still howls with hunger in the woods, the same bears haunt the mountain caves, the same wild boar, beset by a pack of hounds in some bushy thicket, pokes its bristly snout out of the brake, sharpens its tusks, and gnashes its teeth as formerly when a band of tattooed hunters flung their stone hatchets at its head.”
“Those first inhabitants of France were tattooed like island savages?” asked Jules. [[172]]
“Yes, my friend. They decorated their bodies with designs in blue, a pigment extracted from a plant called woad; and to make the decoration ineffaceable they forced the coloring matter into the skin by pricking themselves till the blood flowed.
“This practice, called tattooing, is still found in our day in many countries, among tribes unacquainted with the benefits of civilization. At the other end of the world, at our antipodes, the natives of New Zealand are most expert in this kind of decoration. With a sharp awl, impregnated with divers colors, they prick themselves with little stabs and trace, point by point, fanciful designs which turn their skin into veritable living embroidery. Red and blue spirals turn in inverse directions from both sides of the forehead and continue in rose-work on the cheeks. Little palm-leaves spread over the nostrils; a sun darts its rays all around the chin; two or three little stars give a blue tinge to the lower lip. The rest of the body is ornamented in the same lavish manner: fantastic animals cover the middle of the back; a tortoise pokes out its head and four feet in the hollow of the breast; the hands and feet, pricked in fine tracery patterns, look as if covered with open-work gloves and stockings. Our ancestors of the stone-hatchet age decorated themselves very much like this.”
“Those poor New Zealanders,” remarked Emile, “must hurt themselves dreadfully, disfiguring themselves like that.”