IX
THE FIRST POT
Sometime before the Cave People discovered the use of the bow and arrow, they had learned to make clay pots or bowls. For many years the tribe lived in the tropical lands where the bread fruit ripened nearly the whole year round, and where nuts were plentiful and tubers and sweet yams were often to be found; where there were more nests than there were trees in the forests, filled with treasures of fresh eggs; and there were fowl and fish. As much as the horde loved to eat the wild duck or the cocoanut, or even the wild honey, one and all knew that when the hot sun beat down upon bare brown skins in the heat of the day during the summer there was nothing in all the valley so sweet as a drink of water.
One could go without food for many suns, but if one day passed without fresh water for the members of the group, fevers came upon them, the strange fevers that caused them to do many foolish things.
At first no member of the tribe willingly journeyed far from the source of fresh water, for they had nothing with which to carry water from one place to another. Then they used cocoanut shells, and sometimes the shells that lay upon the banks of the great river. But these held little and were easily upset.
Then some one discovered that the hollow joints of the giant bamboo were more easy to carry and held more water, and these became the first water jugs of the clan.
Later, when it became the fashion for men and women to decorate themselves with the skins of the animals they had slain, they found that there are many uses which hides may serve.
The Cave People wore no clothes, but bound over their shoulders they bore great weights of skins and hides, of heads and tails, of bones and teeth, as a mark of their skill and bravery in the hunt. Great teeth cunningly fastened together made necklaces that spoke every day more loudly than a man’s voice of what that man had done.
But as pride grew in these emblems of prowess, little by little the people of the tribe began to use these hides for other things. They found that, with holes punched along the edges, through which a thong might be drawn, as a gathering string about a handbag, these skins made water bags that one could carry on a far journey, taking with him drink for a whole day. But it was only when the sun beat down like the flames of the fire that they thought much on these things. Then thoughts of water and the milk of the cocoanut were never long absent.
It was at the time of the year when the scorching rays of the summer sun had licked dry all the little brooks and most of the springs that Laughing Boy and Web Toe, he who could outswim the fastest fishes, planned an excursion over the hills in search of wild honey.