OGGA--THE MAN.
Where the opening valleys of the Fair Land turned northward into the
Dismal Country of heaped ridges, interminable peat hogs, low woods,
and scanty or puissant streams, upon an upland sparingly covered with
trees, and almost on its incline to the lowland beyond it, dwelt
Ogga--the mastodon hunter.
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.
The smilodon, the terrific tiger of those young years, voracious and
blood-thirsty, was not a natural occupant of this northern zone. It was
a rare animal, though almost constantly present in the warmer seasons,
in small numbers or perhaps in single pairs. It belonged to the regions
of South America, but at that time the Isthmus of Panama had a much
greater lateral extension, and the avenues of animal migration north or
south became greatly widened. A coastal platform, torrid and moist, and
the central ridges, flanks, and successional elevations of the Rocky
Mountains offered a contrasted range of conditions for the movement to
and fro of wild animals.
Predatory animals, like the smilodon, made their way northward with
precarious and tentative advances. And the mastodon so far established
itself in South America, as to become under the modifying influences of
separation and environment the elephant of the Andes in Peru.
As Dr. Von Schenck has recorded, the Bengal tiger ranges northward to
the latitude of 52 degrees or even 48 degrees in Asia, to which point
the Polar Bear in a reversed manner descends from the north.
It is easy to conceive that contemporaneous possession of a common
ground by a hunter and carnivorous beast like the Sabre-toothed Tiger,
and the vegetable feeding elephants, would have acted as an inducement,
of varying intensity but always present, for the former to extend its
range and enter the grazing grounds, the formal metropolis of the
latter.
Ogga was an ivory hunter and he had also encountered a few displaced
walrus coming down from the Behring Sea region. The occasional pursuit
of these visitors carried him to the shores of the ocean, and so in his
zestful and industrious quest for this precious material he had become
acquainted with the trails, passes, rivers, lakes and inhabitants
of this whole land. It was his domain. The fierce inclemency of its
winters, the terrors of its storms, the temperate luxuriance of
its summers, were all known to him, and in its long and vigorous
exploration by him he had passed almost into the arid canyon country on
the east. Amid so much varied activity, from this dependence upon skill
and strength and courage, the character of Ogga had grown upward into
a structure of available and solid qualities of heart and mind, and to
him, as to all these precursory denizens, an intimacy with nature, a
perpetual companionship with the air and the ground, and the beasts,
had woven a thread of sentiment not unreal, not unusual, in the strong
fibres of his being.
It was the morning of the same day on which Lhatto hastened from the
highland to the shore, driven by an instinct or some suasion, knit in
with the destiny of races, that Ogga stood watching the chasing snow
wreaths upon the distant Zit, equipped for a new hunt for ivory amongst
the hidden mastodon in the low country before him. He was a picture of
aboriginal beauty.
His stature was accentuated by the spareness of his frame, its
muscular precision, and the coppery swarthiness of its hue. He wore a
skin apron and at the moment when he emerged from his tent nothing else
hid the sinewy and blended outlines of the figure, incorporated with
suggestions of endurance, pliability and action.
His face was youthful, in an Indian type, the cheek-bones high but not
relieved, the eyes set and scrutinizing, with that ineffable gaze of
mystery fitting his relations to an unborn world. His hair, black and
braided, hung about his head, and he had drawn into his wide mouth with
its thin lips a string upon which his teeth were fixed, gleaming above
a short chin carried backward into the mandibular processes of his jaw
by strong quadrangular lines. His beauty would have startled, by its
brusque combination of grace and poise and woodland variety, a drawing
room of exquisites but it would have also soon become repellent under
such artificial conditions, and would only have courted the admiration
of curiosity. Where he was, in the morning light, at the side of the
rough wigwam upon an upland on whose carpet of grass the sunlight lay
in patches, with the sombre and wonderful majesty of primeval forests,
themselves the type of an extinct time, behind him, and with that
lonely landscape of steppe and lake and river before him, its farthest
edges rising to the unmantled glory of the glacier, Ogga was superb
and invincible, and prophetic. He waved his hand significantly to the
distance and even as Lhatto had bowed and prayed to Zit, Ogga now
bent forward and with arms folded across his breast, littered some
incoherency of worship to the titular and tutelary genius of his world.
For a few moments Ogga disappeared and when again he stood at the
doorway he was accoutred for the hunt which was to be the day’s
occupation.
A long knife made of green nephritic stone hung by a twisted cord about
his neck, close fitting skin trousers of fox’s or wolf’s skin, the fur
cut or burnt off to the surface of the hide, covered his legs, a belt
of mastodon skin girded his waist, held in place by two pins of bone.
A sort of shawl or mantel tied at the cincture of his neck was thrown
backward behind his shoulders. This latter element of his attire was
the entire skin of a reindeer, curtailed of its tail and legs, and
forming a sort of peak or hood above his head. A basket, holding the
pemmican-like masses which Lhatto had taken with her to the shore, some
flint-stones, or “fire makers,” and scraps of dried and powdered wood,
were fastened to his belt, and in one hand he swung a formidable spear.
This latter weapon, the insignia and instrument of his trade and
prowess, was an illustrious example of wild art. It was almost seven
feet long--the shaft made of a dense arbor-vitae wood much rubbed
and rudely ornamented with incised lines, herring bone patterns, and
circles; the shaft bore at its bifurcated or socketed extremity a
superb flat blade of walrus ivory, the tusk or canine of one of these
phocidean creatures, but despoiled of its cylindricity, and made into
an evenly tapering javelin of fatal power. Two rings of dark green
stone, cemented with pitch, held it firmly to the handle, and inscribed
upon it was a doubtful outline of a mastodon. One other implement
completed his equipment. It was a stone hammer of fair proportions,
withed tightly to a wooden handle which clasped it around its hollowed
sides, and came together beyond it. This was stuck, handle down, into
his belt.
The hunter stood still, and shading his eyes, as if irresolute,
looked towards a remote oval of water which, suddenly illuminated
by the sun, threw its rays upward with the intensity of a spectrum.
His inspection of the distant spot was satisfactory. He grunted and
turned down the path. It led after a few premonitory winds straight
down the embankment, and after half a mile entered the seclusion of a
small cedar wood. The trees were not, however, in such proximity as to
preclude the sunlight. There were more or less open spaces, and here
in charming profusion grew clumps of wild anemone. Inside the wood,
the murmur of running water at a distance became quickly audible, its
faint vibrations failing to penetrate entirely the acoustic hedge of
trees.
The man hurried along with great strides and soon emerged from the
wood, which a backward glance would have discovered occupied a thin
slip of arable soil at the edges of the stormy, boulder-covered plain,
through which our Nimrod was forcing his way with impatient haste. The
scene, except for the bright sky and the copious sunlight, would have
been disquieting and dreary. It was a sort of domed eskar or gravel
heap formed by glacial agencies which had vanished. Crossing its low
crest where the trains of boulders, fragments of rock, angular and
scored erratics imparted an unmistakable glacial expression to the
whole accumulation, Ogga found himself looking into a long depression
holding now a swiftly flowing river. The stream was quite unequal in
this respect. Broad pools expanded its course in places and here its
current became sluggish or imperceptible. Releasing itself from these,
temporary relaxations, it poured over low dams of clay and sand, and
spilled in foam and cataracts to lower levels, on its certain way to
the coast.
One of these lakes was near at hand. It was the water Ogga had seen
from his tent reflecting the sun’s rays. Toward it, still following
the summit of the prolonged ridge, Ogga turned his steps. The violence
or power or duration of the former ice transportation was seen by the
monoliths amongst which he moved. Great cubes of stone thrown against
each other and surmounted by others, formed veritable observatories,
while approximate alignments of huge masses brought so closely together
that their opposed sides formed alleys and corridors, in which the sun
never penetrated; impregnable shelters for fugitive reserves of ice, or
snow still remaining from the winter’s storms.
At times Ogga quite disappeared in these hidden streets, his
reappearance occurring after such an interval of time as had permitted
him to make considerable progress towards the lake. Finally, climbing
a long slope, over one aspect of which the escaping waters from above
emptied themselves in a noisy torrent, Ogga stood on the edge of a very
considerable basin. It was formed in a continuation, on a higher level,
of the eskar over which he had been moving. Receding around it were
terraces of gravel and sand and clay. The lake lay in this enclosed
pocket, a deep hole formed perchance by some torrential power of water,
or occupied at a former time by an enormous mass of ice, a fraction of
a great glacier which had become imbedded in the mud and stony debris,
and finally, succumbing to the increasing heat, had melted, discharging
its mineral burdens about it, heaping up the walls of its own prison,
until it itself vanished, its witness and transmuted form being the
lake that succeeded it. The terrace, or higher ground embracing it,
formed at points vertical escarpment, especially at its upper end,
where the river that fed it had worn down its bed through the centre of
such an embankment of wasted and foreign matter.
The lake was not unattractive. It was a sort of Arctic mere. Vegetation
in low growths of willows or alders and ashes, emphasized in the most
surprising way by an aberrant pine or even cypress, sticking up its
tall spire, covered some of its sides. In patches of grass, the Arctic
scene displayed a vigor and brilliancy that brought even from the
apathetic Ogga exclamations of interest or delight.
The hunter, emerging on this deep tarn, paused. His eyes rose above
the borders of the lake, crossed the empty plateau beyond it, and
met again far off Zit, with its iron crown, amid the discomfited and
baffled glaciers whose tardy defeat was already recorded in this vacant
ground. He seemed absorbed in contemplation when a brushing sound, the
sway of crushing branches, and a half suffocated sigh proceeding from a
bunch of birches at the head of the lake almost immediately bordering
the debouchement of the vociferous river, turned all his languor into
strained expectation.
The next instant and the curving tusks of an immense mastodon sprang
into view from between the parting branches, and the uplifted trunk of
the proboscidean, lifted up between them, hurled outward in this arena
of devastation and utter solitude the same trumpeting note which from
its congeners in the tropics of India or Africa awoke the echoes of
the jungle and the bush. Ogga fell flat upon his chest, watching every
movement of his great quarry. The mastodon stopped at the water’s edge
and then with a renewed roar plunged into the lake. He was alone. Ogga
knew well the call. It was the cry of the desolation of loneliness.
The great beast had in some way lost his companions; diverted from
their _spoor_ or possibly attacked, it had wandered from the herd, and
with almost human desperation was struggling to regain them. The cry
was not the note of anger, its shrill vibrant hoarseness marked the
exacerbation of a sense of desertion and hopelessness.
The place where the huge creature had entered the water was not deep
but thickly encumbered with silt and sediment brought by the stream,
loaded with the dust of the attrition of the ancient rocks. Into this
unconsolidated mud the unfortunate and disturbed animal sank deeply.
Its fore quarters sank first and as its body entered the pond its
entire bulk seemed suddenly swallowed up. Its head disappeared beneath
the water. The tips of the tusks and the exsert trunk, through which it
breathed, were yet above the surface. It was visibly fighting fiercely
against engulfment, and the agitated water broke in small waves at the
side of Ogga.
The herculean strength of the mastodon won, and essaying still deeper
water, liberated from its treacherous footing, it reappeared, its head
half emergent, swimming to the opposite shore. Ogga arose on his knees,
his spear drawn tightly across his abdomen by both hands, and a smile
lurking in his face still wove its intangible tracery of pleasure about
his eyes.
And now the dramatic movement increased in interest. As Ogga looked
the smile vanished from his eyes, a sudden keen excitement took its
place, he leaped to his feet, his mouth opened as if he were about to
speak, but no word or syllable or sound was heard. Moving stealthily,
crouching, belly flat, upon the ground, to which in color it offered a
deceptive resemblance, Ogga saw on the opposite bank towards which the
disconcerted mastodon was now strenuously swimming, the hateful form of
the tiger-cat, the smilodon, the sabre-toothed, the vagrant savage from
the south.
Indeed the spectacle roused all the deeply seated, and through
practice, exercised instincts of the hunter. He watched, and the color
slowly ebbing from his cheeks again ebbed back, his hands clasping
the useless spear rose and fell, the surges of his emotion broke in
suspirations from his lips, the soul of the hunter realized the meaning
of that animal encounter beneath the glacial skies.
The mastodon now clambered with frequent scrambles and awkward plunges
up the opposite bank. Its footing, uncertain on the rolling stones and
pebbles, dislodged from the terrace, hardly permitted it to make much
progress. Still immersed in the water, its broad back glistening with
drops of water enmeshed in its hairy hide, it stood still, rolling its
long trunk between its tusks and emitting harsh cries of distress and
recall.
The brown heap upon the scantily clothed upland, on the very verge
of the incline up which the mastodon was endeavoring to rise, moved
cautiously forward, and Ogga could see rising and falling in the long
grass the sweeping tail of the cat; he could see the half opened jaws
of the beast of prey exposing the murderous canine that descended
from its upper jaw, curving backward, like a white stiletto; he could
even discern that masked movement of the muscles which the cat so
wonderfully controls and by which it slips along the ground with almost
imperceptible creeping of its hidden feet. Ogga saw the whitish fur of
its underside pressed out in thick folds as the animal hugged the earth
with furtive malice.
And yet the mastodon was unconscious. Perhaps if he had seen the
ambush, it would not have diverted him from his purpose. Again he
forced his huge mass out of water up the bank. The water now rose
above his hind quarters, but his shoulders were fully exposed. Again
he trumpeted, turning his head slowly around. In another instant his
eyes would have detected the smilodon. The latter had now abandoned
concealment, it rose to its full height, then sank back upon its
haunches, its whole body disappeared. The succeeding moment, as Ogga
leaped to his feet, the body of the cat was launched into the air.
Ogga saw its outspread legs, the extended claws, the tail stiffened
outward in a line with its back; his ears caught the half stifled
snarl of the descending carnivore as it rose from the bank, and
immediately they heard also the thud of its impact upon the gray and
brown prominences of the mastodon’s body. The crafty creature had
not altogether succeeded. The great impetus given to it in its wide
leap outward, and a necessary descent in a vertical line of over some
twenty feet imparted an unexpected revolution to its body. It fell
upon the mastodon but was propelled over it, and a confused jumble
of tail, legs, head and claws met Ogga’s view, as, in the excitement
of his interest, he ran forward. The terrific elastic strength of
the animal saved it from falling in the water. It recovered itself,
inflicting long lacerations in the hide of its host. Almost instantly
as it regained its own equilibrium it dashed forward to the head of its
victim.
The mastodon at first seemed shocked into immobility, the next moment
its head shook violently, its trunk with leviathan energy was swung
around and backwards, its evident design being to dislodge the invader.
To avoid this revolving sledge the cat had sprung forward and crouching
upon the frontal bones of the elephant had, with claw and tooth,
attacked its eyes. The excruciating agony drove the mastodon into a
demoniacal rage; the cat had torn away one cheek and the excavated
orbit of the elephant’s eye was drenched in blood. The mastodon,
furious and demented, turned backward into the lake, and as he turned
some rolling stone beneath his feet, some inequality or sudden
compression of the muddy floor threw him sideways. With an asthmatic
roar, his trunk still lifted above the surface, he sank, and the
imperilled cat, half immersed, clung to his head, so deeply submerged
as to deprive her of all opportunity of assault.
The cat’s position was indeed unique. The elephant had now completely
abandoned its first attempt to reach the other side of the lake.
It turned and swam into the central current, that eddied in broad
swirling vortices directly in the path of the inrushing river. The
cat perched upon its living raft was plainly disconcerted. Its own
irritable snarls mingled with the occasional whines of the mastodon;
it stirred restlessly in its unwelcome bath, its glaring eyes and
hideously distended mouth, turning upon Ogga, whose presence, no
longer concealed, seemed to add a new motive or accent of ferocity to
its dismay.
The exit of the water from the lake was made over a glacial dam,
forming the slope Ogga had ascended. Through this wall the corrosive
action of the stream had partially excavated a shallow channel. The
descent was still abrupt, and the overflow of the lake, which now was
excessive by reasons of the accelerated contributions from the melting
ice-barriers and fluviatile discharges from the glaciers, poured down
over it in a deep flood.
Towards this perilous avenue of escape the mastodon was moving, and the
smilodon, tamed now by the cold and its untoward position, had abated
its defiant growls. With eyes almost piteously fixed upon the shores,
its cries had fainted into disconsolate moans. Erecting itself upon its
unstable support, the head of the mastodon, which sensibly had risen
so that the mammoth could itself discover its position, the cat seemed
about to project itself upon the water and seek summary escape from its
embarrassments.
Both had now more than half passed the centre of the small but deep
lake, and the current which had relaxed its velocity as their distance
increased to the head of the lake, began to resume its initial force
as it felt the suction of the waterfall at the foot of the expanse. At
this moment, a critical one for the smilodon, the elephant suddenly
sank completely, his trunk and the polished tips of his tusks
disappearing simultaneously. The cat, completely inundated, was swept
from its high perch, and sprawling in the water, was forced to swim to
safety. At this instant Ogga became a participant in the feral drama.
Running along the rim of the pond, he placed himself where the cat,
slowly extricating itself from the middle tide, was with difficulty
directing its way. He untied the reindeer skin from his neck, dropped
the spear, and hastily surveying the ground, chose a few plummet-shaped
stones from the numbers of stones encumbering the bank. Armed with
these he retired a short way back from the very edge of the lake, to a
low elevation. This slight prominence afforded him a clearer view and
brought the range of his efforts more directly upon the upper surfaces
of the bewildered animal. His object was evident.
The cat was now swimming directly toward him. Ogga raised his arm.
With lightning speed, with the swiftness of a hurled bolt, the smooth
missile left his hand and smashed against the skull of the smilodon.
It was followed by a rain of others. They crashed upon the creature,
they entered its eyes, they tore its skin, they broke its teeth,
they opened its back. The water foamed with their rapid impact. The
desolated beast, now reduced to suppliance, still pursued its course
to the shore. During the short intervals when Ogga searched about him
for those water-worn and ellipsoidal pebbles which furnished him with
the most effective weapons, the creature, still strong and formidable,
gained in its approach. At last its feet touched the bottom, and as
if renewed in all its tenacious instincts, dripping and shrunk, its
beautiful coat pressed upon its lank and muscular form, it sprang
forward, its horrid mouth suffused and vomiting blood.
Ogga sprang to meet it. But he held no rounded stones. Above his head
was poised a heavy boulder. As he advanced the smilodon with cowering
and subtle evasion crouched; its head lay flat upon the earth, its
long tail swept the ground behind it with eager oscillations. Ogga
rushed on. The dazed animal did not move, the great rock fell upon its
crumbling, cracking skull. The smilodon was dead.
The mastodon had reaped the reward of its nimble strategy. Relieved
of its incubus it had turned again to the opposite banks, and when
Ogga had despatched its foe, it stood on the plain, suffering from its
wounds and wailing in whistling squeaks which sounded incongruously
enough when compared with its enormous size. Its bulk was indeed
unusual, and Ogga looked at the superb tusks garnishing the huge head,
with envy. It was just then browsing, tearing up small herbs, seizing
bushes and uprooting them, and with its trunk beating them upon its own
body at the spots where its dead enemy had inflicted painful gashes.
Ogga recovered his composure. He dragged the smiloden up from the
water’s edge, replaced his shawl, picked up his spear, and hurried on
up the stream. About a mile beyond the lake, the river which fed it
broadened out in a flat, saucer-like depression full of stones and
boulders, over which it rippled and broke with musical cadences. Here
Ogga readily crossed the stream, and once over hastened back, hoping to
find the mastodon, which it was now his evident intention to secure.
The prey was more vulnerable because of its lost eyesight, though its
isolation, as Ogga well knew, would add vigor to its self-defence, and
its recent experience render it less susceptible to stratagem.
When Ogga had returned on the other side to the herbage and bushes
where he had left the mastodon, the animal had gone. It was not
difficult to trace its steps, and indeed its frequent trumpetings heard
at a distance revealed inerrantly its location. The trail led up; a
continuous ascent carried the hunter from the lower valley to a wide
and mountainous plain, extending indefinitely on all sides, and only
interrupted in its even surfaces by islands of unassorted glacial tilt.
These formed elliptical elevations. They were the unremoved relics of
a great deposit of the same material, covering this whole area, which
had resisted the pluvial agencies which had degraded and disturbed
the morainal accumulations. Their elongated shape--one axis longer
than the other, and the longer axes in all cases directed in the same
direction--showed their origin. Floods of water had at some time poured
over this terrace, gradually the streams on the surface had excavated
for themselves deeper channels, and then wearing away their banks,
had finally crossed the partitions separating them from neighboring
streams, and the confluent and united inundation had denuded and
degraded the whole plain. These residual hillocks were now the only
witnesses of the former surface and composition of the land.
When Ogga reached the level of this plain, as he glanced across it, no
trace of the mastodon was discovered. The almost naked field before him
was empty. But there had been no mistaking the heavy impress of the
prodigious feet of the mastodon, and without halting, Ogga followed the
great foot marks out into the plain. They led him directly to one of
these isolated projecting spools of gravel, and they disappeared behind
it.
This projection was some thirteen or fifteen feet high, its upper
surface was coated with a feeble growth of grass, and its sides
incurved so that the upper rim of the mound ran outward and overhung. A
few observations only were necessary to reveal to Ogga the exhausted
quadruped sitting behind the mound preternaturally still, its hind legs
thrown sideways, its fore legs stiffly extended, and its great head,
covered with the deep furrows made by the tiger’s claws and shockingly
disfigured, where its right eye had been gouged from its socket, thrown
backward.
Ogga spoke: “He is mine;” but he watched him for many moments longer,
forming his plans, and preparing for the skillful work which would save
his words from becoming an idle boast. Again the man threw away his
cloak and basket, flung from him the heavy stone maul, retaining only
his spear and knife.
He clambered carefully to the top of the mound, examined its
circumference, and when apparently satisfied with his observation,
placed the ivory spear at one point near the edge, and on the side
above the still motionless mastodon. Then Ogga slid and tumbled down,
drew his nephrite knife from his neck and crept around to the mastodon.
The brute had remained in the same position, but its pain forced from
it deep sighs, and it trembled. Ogga’s demeanor was inspired with
daring and though his movements were governed by extreme caution, there
was not implied for an instant hesitancy or fear.
Slowly on hand and knees he approached, from behind, the strangely
inert creature; when a few paces off he bounded to his feet, tore
forward, and utterly regardless of the monumental power before him,
and its amazing superiority in strength, rushed upon its side nearest
the dirt wall. The nephrite blade was brandished in the air, its fine
edge directed forwards. With frantic energy, Ogga immediately beneath
the bleeding wound on the animal’s head, drove the stone scimitar into
the folds of its neck, and with such force, such urgency, that it was
buried to the hilt. Quick as a flash he deserted his hold, sprang
up the dirt wall, clutched its overhanging edge, where his previous
observation had located a half buried boulder, and with his hand on the
stone support, drew himself above. His spear was at his side. He seized
it and stood erect, glowing with a splendid excitement, but voiceless;
his eyes were fixed below him.
The mastodon, completely surprised, had regained its feet, convulsed
with a blind rage. It stumbled backward, and as it raised its head it
caught sight of the defiant figure above it. Pain and fury incited it.
With a stifled bellow it plunged forward, its head bent, its tusks
prominent. It had but one aim, the upheaval of the pedestal on which
Ogga awaited its attack. Again Ogga smiled. He encroached upon the
farthest margin of the diminutive table and held his spear before him
tightly clasped with both hands.
The impetus of the mastodon was extreme. As it struck the bank against
which its useless anger impelled it, the tusks buried themselves in the
earth and the vanquished monster was momentarily held, its twisted head
held firmly against the dirt by the chancery of its own impalement.
Then Ogga jumped. He sprang to the head of the animal below him, its
occipital development affording room for his support. Balanced for
an instant, he raised his spear upward and then, at the exact nuchal
symphysis, forced it through skin and between the vertebrae, cutting
the spinal cord. With a throb that shook the colossal fabric of the
beast, the mastodon rolled sidewise and fell, and its tusks ripped out
of their burial in the earth. Ogga declined with the heaving mass and
lit upon the ground. The mastodon also was dead.
The afternoon of the day had come, and neither food or drink had passed
the mouth of the hunter. He turned back to the basket with its pemmican
contents and sitting on a rock where he could see his mighty prey,
where he could also see the ice pinnacles of Zit, the long furrowed
glacier also, and just dimly, at this elevation, catch the blue hazes
of the sea where Lhatto was fighting for her life, Ogga, the hunter and
the Man, broke his fast.
The incident is one of interest to recall. In the remoteness of a
day which science unsuccessfully endeavors to fix, but with lofty
magnanimity in its indifference to economy of time, places any
where from fifty to one hundred thousand years ago, the human
species, evolved or created, catching in its face the reflection of
higher things, feeling the pregnancy of its own fate in its untold
yearnings, its misty spiritual instincts, its forming language, its
emotional power, had begun the process of subduing the earth and
all that therein is. The uses of food, the preparation of clothing,
the devices of defense and attack, the ingenuity of observation and
application, the coinage of tales and prayers and verses, the emergence
of passion and of art, of the sense of beauty, the utilization of the
hard and wearable things of the soil, of animals, its grasping after
preeminence, its deification of courage and endurance, all these
things come before us, in the prefigurement of them in this story, of
Lhatto and of Ogga. And the chances of the race, then as now, lay in
the young. Theirs was power, was ambition, was aspiration, was the
indefinable lure and reward of love. On their lips words first formed,
their minds were the conceiving minds, their hands the artificers,
and in their organs resided the sexual promises of life. And Ogga and
Lhatto were both young.
When Ogga had finished his meal, he walked away for a short distance
and at a spring softly flowing beneath a rock quenched his thirst,
leaning flat at its rim and sucking up the sparkle and the cold. The
man returned to the immense bulk of the mastodon, and began at once
to free from its skull the ivory tusks. With his stone maul he broke
in the alveolar sockets and from the shattered bone drew forth these
exaggerated teeth.
The night was sensibly nearer when this task was completed.
Re-installing his slender outfit, wrapping more closely the reindeer
coat about him, balancing the ivory bows over his shoulders and holding
them as well, with his spear and knife, stuck full of blood, Ogga
turned back over the plain to the river in the lower valley, on whose
bank lay the bruised smilodon. But Ogga had no intention of recovering
the cat’s skin. His way, as the waning day shot red streaks into the
sky, and the northern lights, with phosphorescent palpitation, rose
above Zit, lay across the plain more to the west, bringing him finally
much below the lake, and the cedar wood which he had traversed in the
morning. He was advancing to the shore.
As the stars lit the immensity of the black zenith, the Man had reached
the shelter of a huge erratic of such proportions and posture that,
tilted over on one side, it formed a sort of leanto. Here he rested,
casting down the ivory tusks. He swept together with his hand a few dry
fragments of wood and hurled upon them the uprooted trunks of small
trees. He took from his basket the dry tinder, struck the “fire makers”
together, holding his head close to the ground; a spark ignited the
punk-like powder, his breath fanned the little flame into a blaze, the
wood became ignited, and the ascending forks of the fire licked up
the tree trunks while they cast grotesque shadows on the granite face
behind them, and in those shadows a wavering and distorted silhouette
of Ogga himself swayed to and fro as he sang the song of the mastodon.
OGGA’S SONG
The great Mover stirs in the wood
His horns are white as the snow
And he makes a loud sound.
His feet are big as dog’s, his legs like trees,
The hair stands out on his breast and his back
He drinks the river dry and swims in the lake.
He must die; he must move no more;
On the plain he must die, in the wood;
In the lake; Ogga must have his horns.
Where comes the Mover? He is born of the Ice.
He has come from Zit, Where goes the Mover?
He goes through the wood, he sleeps there,
In the morning he shall come again.
No! he comes no more. Ogga has sent him away.
The river runs, the lake runs
And the Mover runs never again.
So sang Ogga, on the threshold of poetic feeling, in the days of
the Ice. His voice was not unmelodious, its chanting cry, with half
symptomatic expression, rose on the night air in that stony desert,
while the river sang too its endless lament, and, awakened from sombre
reveries, the snowy owl darted from its perch, sweeping the ground
with silver wings. Long before the light of the rising sun had built a
bridge of golden mosaic across the East upon the flaky clouds, Ogga
had left his improvised camp. The ivory tusks were secreted beneath
the rock. His reindeer mantle was again clasped about his shoulders,
and the nephrite blade which had hung about his neck was in one hand,
the stone hammer stuck in his belt, the precious basket yet holding
a remnant of its first contents under his arm, and with his other
disengaged hand he had seized the spear. He strode along the banks,
varied with many inequalities, of the murmuring river, and from his
haste seemed intent upon some well defined object. As the day dawned,
descending from the first light-touched crest of Zit with widening
circles over all the landscape, its increasing splendor fell with
a sudden flash of brightness upon a bank of white clay directly in
the path Ogga was following. The river had uncovered this nucleus
otherwise buried in superimposed stones and sand, exactly at the spot
where its waters bending southward had forced their way through the
narrow obstacle of this transverse ridge. The river delayed in its
course had formed in its eddying impatience a shallow expansion. On
the edge of this deeper pool Ogga halted. He dropped the spear and
the basket and the knife, and ran to the clay bank. He dug into the
plastic and slightly granular material, filling his closed hands with
it. Returning, he placed the knife, the spear and the hammer, which he
detached from his belt, in the shallow water, and then one after the
other, smeared and rubbed them with the sandy clay. The adherent blood
was slowly removed, and the lustrous implements became again sweet and
comely.
The man regarded them with admiration. They were his friends, his
solicitors and helpers. Used well, they returned to him in results all
his attention, and they were well formed, symmetrical, expressive, apt,
faithful, unchanged, unchangeable. His hand glided with blandishing
pressure along the keen edge of the green stone, and he placed the
ivory apex of the spear lovingly against his cheeks. He was well
pleased. Ogga laughed.
Then the man threw off his own garments and naked ran like a deer up
and down the sandy plain for the space of a mile or so, his hands and
arms now moving over his head, now shooting outwards, now falling with
resounding thwacks against his thighs. The speed and exertion were
really considerable. Ogga glowed and burned, his cheeks were hot with
flame, the drops of sweat slipped down his breast, his breath panted.
As he turned back on his last lap the man rushed onward into the water,
and splashing, half plunging, sank from sight in the cool pool.
A few yards from the shore his black hair rose above the ripples,
a dash into the shore and the ablution was finished. Then, his
habiliaments resumed, his allies, the friendly weapons, placed aright,
the young hunter strode southward to the distant shore, still miles
away, while the steppe country grew less drear and savage. The glaciers
were farther and farther away, the clouds about Zit hid its pinnacle,
the land became smoothed and green with carpets of grass, deer sprang
suddenly aside in flight through spruce and willow groves, a low hum of
waves seaward became audible, and now and then a gull flew piping above
his head to some faraway eerie. A south wind wooed him, and his heart,
by some instinct of approach to a great joy, became light and eager.
It was the afternoon of the same day that Ogga saw the sea. He saw it
limpid, shining from its mirror-like face with dazzling refulgence.
He was on a sort of knoll made by a northern outlier of the long
meridional dike which framed on its sea side the country of Lhatto--the
Fair Land. From this tubercle of rock covered with soil, he gazed
directly down upon its glassy surface. He went cautiously on, not
accustomed to the ragged descent, over split, splintered and weathered
rock cleavages. But his strength, the supple resources of his knit and
tireless body, met the unusual exercise, and Ogga at length stood upon
the shore of the Ocean.
He stood upon a flat boulder, a sort of natural stone table, and a sort
of stupor, a poetic amazement, held him stunned. The coast line south
of him was full of beauty, the beetling cliffs, their verdurous and
dependent edges, the far off headlands, bays paved with colored rock;
the coast line north of him so recently formed upon the upturned and
disordered face of nature, culminating in crystalline glory in the ice
zone about Zit--the pathless waters before him, all, all united in some
sort of appeal that eviscerated and smote him, and a nameless longing
for companionship, the endless, depthless cry for love coordinate with
the bursting fires of desire and devotion transmuted the wild man into
something noble and ecstatic.
He left his equipment on the shore and ran forward--from stone to stone
he leaped with unpremeditated cunning; his zig zag course, as he passed
from one pebble to another, brought him at last to the verge of a tiny
harbor entered by a neck of water, and fortressed by dark rocks draped
beneath with tressy sea weeds.
His pursuit was checked; he could go no further. His eyes, bright with
ardor and delight, sought out the line of pale icebergs, and then
they fell below him upon the transparent and liquid beryl lapping
languorously at his feet. And as they fell, upon their retinas
sprang the image fair and true, of a sleeping woman’s face, dark and
beautiful, amid dishevelled hair, rocking in a little boat, as in a
cradle, on the quietly heaving bosom of the sea. It was Lhatto.
[Illustration]