In a sunny land in Greece called Arcadia there lived a king and a queen
who had no children. They wanted very much to have a son who might live
to rule over Arcadia when the king was dead, and so, as the years went
by, they prayed to great Jupiter on the mountain top that he would send
them a son. After a while a child was born to them, but it was a little
girl. The father was in a great rage with Jupiter and everybody else.
"What is a girl good for?" he said. "She can never do anything but sing,
and spin, and spend money. If the child had been a boy, he might have
learned to do many things,--to ride, and to hunt, and to fight in the
wars,--and by and by he would have been king of Arcadia. But this girl
can never be a king."
Then he called to one of his men and bade him take the babe out to a
mountain where there was nothing but rocks and thick woods, and leave it
there to be eaten up by the wild bears that lived in the caves and
thickets. It would be the easiest way, he said, to get rid of the
useless little creature.
The man carried the child far up on the mountain side and laid it down
on a bed of moss in the shadow of a great rock. The child stretched out
its baby hands towards him and smiled, but he turned away and left it
there, for he did not dare to disobey the king.
For a whole night and a whole day the babe lay on its bed of moss,
wailing for its mother; but only the birds among the trees heard its
pitiful cries. At last it grew so weak for want of food that it could
only moan and move its head a little from side to side. It would have
died before another day if nobody had cared for it.
Just before dark on the second evening, a she-bear came strolling down
the mountain side from her den. She was out looking for her cubs, for
some hunters had stolen them that very day while she was away from home.
She heard the moans of the little babe, and wondered if it was not one
of her lost cubs; and when she saw it lying so helpless on the moss she
went to it and looked at it kindly. Was it possible that a little bear
could be changed into a pretty babe with fat white hands and with a
beautiful gold chain around its neck? The old bear did not know; and as
the child looked at her with its bright black eyes, she growled softly
and licked its face with her warm tongue and then lay down beside it,
just as she would have done with her own little cubs. The babe was too
young to feel afraid, and it cuddled close to the old bear and felt that
it had found a friend. After a while it fell asleep; but the bear
guarded it until morning and then went down the mountain side to look
for food.
In the evening, before dark, the bear came again and carried the child
to her own den under the shelter of a rock where vines and wild flowers
grew; and every day after that she came and gave the child food and
played with it. And all the bears on the mountain learned about the
wonderful cub that had been found, and came to see it; but not one of
them offered to harm it. And the little girl grew fast and became
strong, and after a while could walk and run among the trees and rocks
and brambles on the round top of the mountain; but her bear mother would
not allow her to wander far from the den beneath the rock where the
vines and the wild flowers grew.
One day some hunters came up the mountain to look for game, and one of
them pulled aside the vines which grew in front of the old bear's home.
He was surprised to see the beautiful child lying on the grass and
playing with the flowers which she had gathered. But at sight of him she
leaped to her feet and bounded away like a frightened deer. She led the
hunters a fine chase among the trees and rocks; but there were a dozen
of them, and it was not long till they caught her.
The hunters had never taken such game as that before, and they were so
well satisfied that they did not care to hunt any more that day. The
child struggled and fought as hard as she knew how, but it was of no
use. The hunters carried her down the mountain, and took her to the
house where they lived on the other side of the forest. At first she
cried all the time, for she sadly missed the bear that had been a mother
to her so long. But the hunters made a great pet of her, and gave her
many pretty things to play with, and were very kind; and it was not long
till she began to like her new home.
The hunters named her Atalanta, and when she grew older, they made her a
bow and arrows, and taught her how to shoot; and they gave her a light
spear, and showed her how to carry it and how to hurl it at the game or
at an enemy. Then they took her with them when they went hunting, and
there was nothing in the world that pleased her so much as roaming
through the woods and running after the deer and other wild animals. Her
feet became very swift, so that she could run faster than any of the
men; and her arms were so strong and her eyes so sharp and true that
with her arrow or her spear she never missed the mark. And she grew up
to be very tall and graceful, and was known throughout all Arcadia as
the fleet-footed huntress.