A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

His house, if house it could be called, was a sort of tent of bark with skins placed upon an interior framework of sticks and so disposed that its doorway closed by a broad slab of bark, torn from the great Sequoia, looked over the Dismal Country to the northwest, and the strong eyes of its occupant could see the great glacier, and, if the air was clear, could always see the dark minaret of Zit above it.

The spot was redolent with charm—a charm that gained in interest as the eye turned to the ragged land north of it, where the dreary plain, showing occasional interruptions of hillock and stream, formed a refuge for its disappearing tenantry of mastodon and bear. By some accident of vegetable distribution, or through some violence of weather, a smooth clear space surrounded Ogga’s bark home.

Behind this advancing table land, a dark block of lofty trees rose with majestic forcefulness. They were the giant trees. Their tapering summits with arrow-like precision melted into the blue sky like a winged flight of birds, and far beneath, the broad trunks stood in dark colonnades, a kind of architectural vestibule to the mantling woods, hiding, with their deep umbrageous solidity, the retreating and rising and falling mountains.

When Ogga opened the door of his tent he could look over the steep land ascending to the glacier, and not infrequently he watched the mastodon moving in small herds, or a few individuals in pairs stirring in dark patches among the low trees and bushes at the sides of rivers; could even see their white tusks reflecting the light from the curved ivory, could even hear their low trumpet calls increasing to brisk short snorts, or the wash of the pond waters as their slouching bodies entered some unfrequented pool to drink or bathe.

The sides of his tepee were partially covered with mastodon hide, and fragments of tusk and a few large molars of the prehistoric beast lay on the ground near his door way.

The mastodon was itself a proboscidian which had become widely distributed through the northern half of the American Continent at the close of the Great Glacial Day. It advanced southward and retreated northward, if such expressions have a permissible use, with the advance and retreat of the glacier, the great ice cap, which had in an irregular manner, modified by position, topography and local conditions, stretched from the highlands of Canada north and south. Thus distended it had enveloped the present eastern, middle and western states, withdrawing farther north as its edge extended to the West, but in the West connected with outlying positions along the higher altitudes of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, and pressing to the borders of the ocean at every possible opportunity.

The warm winds from the Pacific, a rise on the west coast, then as now of the isothermal lines, contracted its western expansion. The flora and silva of this section, thrust backward from the north by the invasion of the ice, somewhat more encouraged here in their resiliency against the cold, with intermittent daring stoutly defended more advanced northern stations than did the floras and silva of the East. In the East the long lip of the glacier hung, on the southern boundaries of Pennsylvania, and its refrigerating influence was felt many degrees further south.

Along the fringes of local glaciers as that of the Mountain of Zit in the abundant vegetation—the grasses, the bushes, the aspiring woodland—which were fed by streams, percolating through the sands or issuing in the clay basins and losing some of the extreme cold, in these favorite spots the mastodon congregated. They moved through the country in small herds, frequently in pairs. A certain caution had become hereditary, for prowling sabre-toothed cats (Smilodon) were lured from warmer regions to prey upon these boreal elephants. The method of attack which the nature of the ground made most effective was for the cat to crouch upon some table land or shelf overlooking a defile leading to a pool or stream, or a meadow, and blurring itself with the brown yellowish soil, await the approach of its cumbrous antagonist. It invariably chose the last member of the procession, or better, a belated straggler. Leaping from its high perch, executing springs of surprising velocity and width, it landed on the back of its terrified victim. A struggle ensued, which not infrequently resulted in the discomfiture of the sanguinary bandit, for unless too much engaged or too quickly disabled, the surprised mastodon trumpeted its distress, and this often led to a return of the bulls of the herd, in which case, as the odds became more formidable, the vicious tiger retreated, but never without inflicting dangerous wounds.

Its flight did not mean, however, permanent retreat. It dogged the footsteps of the listless mastodons expecting that the wounded member of the herd would drop behind and become an easy captive, or die from some vital lesion. In either case the ferocious smilodon easily completed its design.

Ogga had indeed witnessed a strange reversal of parts in these combats. The mastodons, if there were more than one bull in the herds, seemed to become infuriated at times, and, encouraged by numbers, turn savagely upon the snarling pleistocene lion and chase it for long distances. The tiger, with tail withdrawn and seized with panic, would rush headlong away, the bristling mastodon pursuing; the heavy trampling, the impetus of their great bodies against interfering trees or shrubs, and their encouraging calls making a weird tumult in those silent deserts. But such a chase was quite usually or always unavailing. The cat, springing sideways, would vanish from view up a tree, the slope of a bank, or even in the long grass, and the disappointed or confused mastodons, losing sight of their enemy, would suddenly collide in an animated throng, and, still exasperated, turn with sudden vehemence upon each other.