Introduction.

Prehistoric Man.

This is a story about things that happened ages and ages ago, before any of us were born, or our great-great-grandfathers either, for that matter. It was so very long ago that there were no houses, or farms, or roads from one place to another, and there was not a single city, or a town, or even a village in the whole earth.

There was just the great, round world, all fresh and new, and covered with growing things; and there were wild beasts of all kinds in the forests, and fishes of all kinds in the seas, and all sorts of birds and flying creatures in the air.

Besides all these wonderful things in the new, new world, there was Man.

He was quite new too. He didn’t know much of anything about the world. All that he really knew was that there was a world, and that he was in it, and that there were fierce wild animals in it too, which would kill him and eat him if he didn’t kill them first. And he knew very well that he was not as swift as the deer, or as big as the elephant, or as strong as the lion, or as fierce as the tiger, and it seemed to him as if he hadn’t much chance to stay alive at all in a world so full of terrible creatures who wanted to eat him up.

But this Prehistoric Man was very brave, and he could do two things which none of the other creatures could do—he could laugh and he could think.

One day, he sat down on a rock, and took his head between his hands and thought and thought, and by and by he lifted up his head and said to his wife,—for of course he had a wife,—“I have it, my dear. If we are not as strong as the wild beasts, we must be a great deal more clever.”

So he got right up off the rock and set about being clever. And so did his wife. They were so clever that they hid themselves in trees and rocks where the wild beasts could not find them. And they found out the secret of fire.

The other creatures could not find out the secret of fire to save their lives, and they were dreadfully afraid of it. Then the Man and his wife made weapons out of stones, and bones, and they made dishes out of mud, and though these things weren’t a bit like our weapons or our dishes, they got along very well with them for many years.

In the earliest times of all, the Woman hunted and trapped the wild creatures, and fished, all by herself, but by and by she began to let the Man do the hunting and bring home the game, while she stayed in the cave house and kept the hearth-fire bright and took care of the children. She cooked the food that he brought home, and she made needles out of bones and sewed skins together for clothes for her husband and the children and herself. After a long time she began to plant seeds of the wild things that she found were good to eat, and to raise food out of the ground.

All these things they did, and many more that had never been done before,—and because they were so much more clever than all the beasts of the forest, the Prehistoric Man and his prehistoric wife lived a long time in a little peace and more happiness than you might at first think possible.

They taught their children all the clever things they had thought out, and these children, when they grew up, taught them to their children, and this went on for hundreds and thousands of years. Each generation learned new things and taught them to the next, until now we have houses and churches and villages and cities dotted over the whole earth, and there are roads going from everywhere to everywhere else. There are railroads and steam-cars and telegraph and telephone lines, and printing-presses, so that to-day everybody knows more about the very ends of the earth than Prehistoric Man could possibly know about what was happening fifty miles away from him.

And all these things we have to-day because the Prehistoric Man and the Prehistoric Woman did their part bravely and well when the earth was young.

This is a story about that far-off time. If you don’t believe it’s true, every word of it, just get out your atlas and find the places on the map. They are every one of them there.

Chapter One.

Grannie and the Twins.

One bright morning of early spring, long ages ago, the sun peered through the trees on the edge of a vast forest, and sent a shaft of yellow sunlight right into the mouth of a great, dark cave. In front of the cave a bright fire was burning, and on a rock beside it sat an old woman. In her lap was a piece of birch-bark, and on the bark was a heap of acorns. She was roasting them in the ashes and eating them. At her right hand, within easy reach, there was a pile of broken sticks and tree-branches, and every now and then the old woman put on fresh wood and stirred the coals to keep the fire bright.

A little path ran from the front of the cave where the old woman sat down the sloping hillside to a blue river, and the morning sun shining across it made a bridge of dazzling light from shore to shore.

Beyond the river there were green fields and forests, and beyond the forests high hills over which the sun climbed every morning. What lay beyond those far blue hills neither the old woman nor any of the clan of the Black Bear had the slightest idea.

Everything seemed quiet and peaceful on that spring morning so long ago. The trees were beginning to turn green and little plants were already pushing their way through the carpet of dead leaves. A robin lit upon the branches of a tree above the cave and sang his morning song.

There was no other sound except the sizzling of a wet stick on the fire, and the snapping noise made by the old woman when she took a roasted acorn from the fire and cracked it with her teeth.

The old woman was not pretty to look at. Her face was as brown as leather and covered with wrinkles, and her hair hung about it in ragged grey locks. It was no wonder that her hair was rough and ragged, for it had never been combed her whole life long, and she was quite old—oh, as old as forty, maybe! But she really couldn’t help her hair being like that any more than she could help being forty, because there was not a single comb yet made in the whole world!

It was a mystery how she cracked the nuts so well, because she had only a few teeth left in her mouth. For clothing she had nothing but the skin of a deer fastened over her left shoulder by a thorn, and tied around her waist with a leather thong.

Although she seemed to be thinking of nothing but her nuts, the little bright eyes of the old woman kept close watch in every direction, and her ears were quick to hear every unusual sound. If a twig snapped, or there was a rustling noise in the underbrush, she was ready in an instant to fling fresh dry sticks on the fire and make it glow red against the black opening of the cave.

She knew that no wild animal, however fierce and hungry, would dare come near the leaping flames. Yet watchful as she was, she did not see two children who were creeping stealthily toward her, over the great rocks which sheltered the mouth of the cave.

They were a boy and a girl, and from their size they must have been about eight years old. They both had bright twinkling eyes and flaming red hair, and were dressed alike in skins of red foxes of almost the same colour. You could tell at a glance that they were twins, but it would have puzzled any one to tell