MA-RA FINDS A NEW KIND OF FOOD, AND A COAT OF FUR
MA-RA, the grandson of Ra, was out looking for food. It was the chief
thing the cave men did. When they had plenty, they would lie in the
sun and sleep, but when food was scarce, as it was now, they spent the
whole day, from morning to night, looking for something to eat.
Ma-Ra went down along the banks of the stream, hoping to find a fish.
It was not so much of a torrent, now, as it had been during the storm,
but it was still swift and strong, dashing down over the rocks in the
narrow way it had cut for itself, and boiling up here and there in
clouds of foam. The wide lake at the lower end of the valley was gone,
and there were no longer any quiet marshy pools along the edge of the
stream, in which fish might live.
The stream poured out of the valley through a narrow gorge, tumbling
over the rocks in a foaming waterfall. This was the only entrance to
the valley, except over the rough, forest-covered hills that surrounded
it on all sides, and none of the cave men, in their hunts for food, had
ever gone outside the valley. They knew nothing of the country beyond,
and were afraid to enter it, not knowing what sort of enemies they
might meet.
Ma-Ra reached the waterfall and stood there for a long time, his heavy
spear in his hand. All he could see through the gorge was a wide marshy
plain, covered with tall rank grass, with here and there a clump of
fern-like bushes and trees. He wondered if there were any food to be
found in the plain, for he had had nothing to eat since the afternoon
before, and he was very hungry. He knew it would be useless to go back
to the caves, for he would find no food on the way, and when he got
back, there would be nothing there either, except a few of the dry
roots of plants on which the cave people were trying to keep themselves
alive. Ma-Ra felt a spirit of adventure stirring within him; why, he
said to himself, should he not go outside the valley and see what he
could find? He might as well be killed by some wild beast, as starve
to death. So he decided to go.
Picking his way carefully over the slippery rocks beside the waterfall,
he finally got to the bottom of it, and found himself on the edge of
the wide, marshy plain. There were many hummocks of grass, with muddy
pools between, but although he searched very carefully, in none of them
could he find any fish.
As he walked along through the tall grass, higher than his waist, he
saw many large birds fly over his head, lighting here and there to feed
on the tender shoots of the grass, but while he knew these birds might
be good to eat, there was no way in which he could catch one of them.
Suddenly Ma-Ra paused, the hair on his neck and head standing up
straight. Some animal was coming toward him through the grass; he saw
the grass tops waving, and heard low grunts, as the creature forced
its way along through the mud. What it was Ma-Ra could not tell, but
he stood quite still, a little to one side of the path the animal was
taking, and waited, spear in hand.
In a few moments he saw a heavy pointed snout come poking through
the grass, with little sharp tusks sticking upward, and small bright
eyes, which turned quickly from side to side, watching for any danger.
Suddenly the animal saw Ma-Ra and stopped. It had never seen a man
before, and did not know what to make of him.
Ma-Ra was very quick. Without waiting a moment, he drove his
flint-pointed spear into the animal's side, just behind its fore-leg.
The wild pig tried his best to use his sharp tusks, but it was too
late. Ma-Ra's thrust had been a fatal one, and in a few moments the
boar fell over on his side, dead.
Ma-Ra drew out his spear. Some bits of the animal's flesh, warm and
covered with blood, clung to his spear point. Half starving, he put
them in his mouth, chewed them, swallowed them. They tasted good to
him, even better, he thought, than raw fish. With the blade of his
spear he cut some strips of flesh from the animal's side and made a
hearty meal. Then, because the body of the boar was too large and heavy
for him to carry, he twisted some marsh grasses together, tied them to
the animal's front legs, and began to drag it along through the marsh
toward the entrance to the valley.
When he at last came to the waterfall, he was tired, and he saw at once
that he would not be able to carry the body of the boar over the steep,
slippery rocks that led into the valley. So he sat down to think what
he should do, and meanwhile, ate some more of the boar meat. Soon he
heard a cry from the rocks above, and saw two of his brothers standing
in the valley entrance, looking down at him in surprise.
He called to them to join him, which they did, chattering loudly over
his bravery in going outside the valley. They too were very hungry, so
Ma-Ra showed them the boar he had killed, and gave them some of the
meat to eat. They liked it, as he had, and soon their stomachs too were
full. Then the three of them carried the body of the boar up over the
steep rocks beside the waterfall, and took it home to the caves, very
proud of what they had done.
That night Ma-Ra's family had a big feast, and Ra patted his grandson
on the back and said a word or two which meant, in their simple
language, that he had done well. The next day several parties of the
cave men went out to hunt for the new sort of food. They found many
different kinds of animals, in the marsh, and on the hillsides around
the valley, and they ate them, and soon got to like the flesh of
animals better even than they had liked the raw fish.
That winter the tribe did not go hungry, and the new food they had
found, as well as the danger of hunting for it, made them bolder and
fiercer than ever. There were scarcely any animals that they were
afraid of now, except the great mammoth elephants, which we call
mastodons, and the huge hairy rhinoceros, which sometimes attacked them
in the marsh, and the terrible sabre-toothed tigers.
Food was not the only thing the cave people got from the bodies of the
animals they killed. For one thing, they found a way to use the skins.
At first, finding them tough and not fit to eat, they threw them away,
but Mother Nature did not like this. She wanted her children to learn
to use the furry skins of the animals they killed. So, one day, when
Ma-Ra and some of his friends were stripping the skin from an animal
they had speared, in the marsh land, she called Cold and Rain to her
and told them to make Ma-Ra and his companions just as uncomfortable as
they could.
Cold and Rain laughed when they heard this, for they loved to make the
funny little creatures dance, so they poured down such a bitter cold
rain that Ma-Ra and the others were chilled to the bone.
Ma-Ra, his teeth chattering from the cold, looked at the skin he had
just stripped from a small bear. The skin was still warm, and without
thinking he wrapped it about his head and shoulders to keep off the
cold rain. His friends did not understand what he was about, at first,
but soon they saw that Ma-Ra was warm, while they were not, and they
tried to take the skin away from him, but he would not give it up.
When the rain was over, and the party had returned to the valley, Ma-Ra
took the skin of the bear with him and hung it up on the wall of the
cave.
The next day, when he went to get it, he was very much disappointed to
find that it had dried hard and stiff as a board, and seemed no longer
of any use to him.
Now Ma-Ra had begun to think quite a good deal, and he remembered
that when the skin was soft, the day before, it had been moist, so he
took it down to the bank of the stream and washed it over and over in
the water, scrubbing it with sand, and pounding it between two round
stones, until it had become quite soft again. Then he put it in the sun
to dry.
Again it dried stiff and hard, and Ma-Ra was about to throw it away.
Then he remembered how the grease and fat of the animals he killed
softened the rough hard skin of his hands, so he got a lump of grease
and rubbed the bear skin over and over with it, working the grease into
all the pores. This time, the skin stayed soft, and Ma-Ra, although he
did not know it, was the first Man to make leather.
He threw the heavy piece of fur about his shoulders, and fastened it
with a sharp thorn, and walked about very proud of his new fur cloak.
After that, the cave people did not call him Ma-Ra any longer, but Han,
which in their language meant the skin of an animal.
[Illustration: THE BEAR SKIN
Ma-Ra threw the heavy piece of fur about his shoulders, and fastened it
with a sharp thorn, and walked about very proud of his new fur cloak.]
Other very useful things, too, the cave people found in the bodies of
the animals they killed. Some of the bones, after they had cracked them
open and eaten the marrow, they used for knives, or for spear points,
and the women made coarse needles from them, with which they later on
sewed together pieces of skins for belts, to hold the men's clubs and
knives when hunting. Sinews, drawn from the animals' muscles, gave
them strong cords or thread, and after a time they made sandals, or
moccasins, out of the tough hides, to protect their feet when running
over the sharp stones. The teeth they often strung on bits of sinew and
hung around their necks, to show what great hunters they were.
As the centuries went by, they once more found, in the marshes below
the valley, fish which had made their way up from the Ocean, and from
the bones of these they made smaller and sharper needles, for sewing
the leather they had begun to use. Strips of this leather, called
thongs, or the twisted entrails of animals, called gut, took the place
of the cords made of marsh grasses, for binding on the heads of spears,
or axes, and as the cave men took to wearing skins and furs, they began
to lose the hair on their bodies, and they looked less and less like
animals, and more and more like human beings.
Besides getting their food by hunting, the cave people soon learned
many ways of trapping animals and other game. In the case of the larger
beasts they sometimes made traps by digging deep holes or pits in the
ground and then fixing upright in the bottom of these pits many strong,
sharp stakes, with keen points. Over the pits they would lay a thin
covering of branches and leaves. These traps were placed in the paths
the animals usually took when going to the streams and ponds to get
water. When the heavy beast walked on the thin covering of the pit, it
would give way, and he would fall on the sharp stakes, and either be
killed, or wounded so that the hunters could make short work of him
with their spears.
Smaller animals and birds they trapped by snares of different sorts.
One kind they made by bending down a stout sapling until it almost
touched the ground, and hooking the end of it under a notched stake
driven in the earth. On the end of the sapling was a noose of cord, or
gut. This noose they spread in a circle around the notched stake. On
the stake they tied a bit of food, for bait. When the animal tried to
pull the food off the stake, the bent sapling would slip out of the
notch and fly upward, and the animal or bird would be caught in the
noose.
In many such ways the cave men got food for themselves and their
families.
The Sun was very much surprised to see how quickly the cave men had
begun to learn.
"They are smarter than any of the other animals on Earth," he said.
"Yes," said Mother Nature. "They are smarter, because they have begun
to use their brains, to think, just as I told you they would. But they
have really only just started. If you watch them carefully, you will
see many surprising things, in the next two or three thousand years."
"They seem very cold," said the Sun, "even with their caves, and their
fur coats. I have a hard time to keep them warm, in the Winter."
"I will attend to that," Mother Nature told him. "I am about to send
them a very wonderful thing."
"What is it?" the Sun asked.
"Fire," Mother Nature replied. "Soon they will be making Heat work for
them."