A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY
“I understand,” began Jules, “the usefulness of the dog to a man left
to his own resources in a desert country in the midst of woods. With
the help of this courageous friend he procures food and defends himself
against animals that endanger his life. But in our countries around
here, it seems to me, that wretched sort of existence can never have
been known.”
“In our countries things took their course just as everywhere else,”
his uncle replied. “Even in places now enjoying the most advanced
civilization, man began with an era of misery of which it will be not
unprofitable to give you some idea; then you will see better from what
depths of barbarism the dog’s services have helped to raise us.
“In the earliest times of which history has preserved some vague
record, what was one day to be the beautiful country of France was a
wild country covered with immense forests, where, living by the chase,
there wandered some few tribes of Gaels; for thus the first inhabitants
of our country were called. They were men of low stature, broad
shoulders, white skin, long blond hair, and blue or green eyes. For
weapons they had stone axes and knives, arrows tipped with fish-bones
or a sharp piece of flint. Fastened to the left arm, they carried for
defense a long and narrow wooden shield; with the right hand they
brandished, as an offensive weapon, sometimes a stake hardened in the
fire, sometimes a heavy bludgeon or club. For the perilous passage of
rivers and of ocean inlets they had fragile little boats made of
wicker, plaited as in our baskets, but covered on the outside with the
hide of a wild ox to exclude the water.”
“But those are the weapons and boats of savages!” interposed Emile.
“Without doubt, my friend; and, equally without doubt, the first Gaels,
ancestors of ours though they were, were veritable savages, differing
hardly at all from those of our own day. They lived mainly by the
chase, herds and agriculture being for ages unknown to them. In their
gloomy forests, damp and cold, using only their poor weapons of stone
and pointed sticks, they attacked a terrible wild ox, the aurochs or
urus, which is now almost extinct. This ox, nearly as large as the
elephant, had enormous horns, a mane of curly wool on its head and
neck, beard under its throat, a deep, hoarse bellow, and a ferocious
look. Its extraordinary strength and indomitable fury made it the
terror of the forests.”
“And weren’t they afraid,” asked Louis, “to attack this fearful
creature with their stone hatchets?”
“They fell upon the furious animal without other weapons than pointed
stakes and stone hatchets; but they had the help of powerful dogs that
seized the beast by the ears and got the mastery of it. The urus held
the place of honor among game. The valiant huntsman who killed it had
for a cup, at the banqueting board, one of the animal’s monstrous
horns.”
“What did they drink from those horns?” Emile inquired.
“At first clear water from the fountains; then, after the race had made
some little progress, an intoxicating drink called cervisia, made from
fermented barley. That was the forerunner of our beer.”
“Can it be,” asked Louis, “that our peaceful ox came from that
intractable beast, the urus, as you call it?”
“Not at all. The domestic ox is a different kind altogether,
originating in Asia and not in the ancient forests of Europe. In our
day there is hardly a urus left. Hunted century after century by
growing civilization, the formidable ox with a mane has long since
deserted these regions to take refuge in the solitudes of the North.
But these solitudes in turn have been taken possession of by man, and
the aurochs has found its last retreat in the swampy forests of
Lithuania in Poland. There a few pairs still live in perfect security,
for it is expressly forbidden to kill them.”
“And why do they keep those ugly oxen?” was Emile’s next question.
“They are not numerous enough to do any harm, and it would really be a
pity to exterminate the last one of these animals that afforded our
ancestors such joy in the hunt.
“The Gaels hunted the elk also, a kind of large stag the size of a
horse or even larger. The elk has under its throat a kind of goiter or
fleshy pendant; its fur is short, stiff, and ash-colored; its horns,
called antlers, are wide-spreading and flattened, and they extend in a
vast triangular expanse with a deeply indented outline; the weight of
each antler may amount to as much as thirty kilograms. That must, as
you see, be a fine specimen of game: an animal that bears on its
forehead, without effort, an ornament weighing a hundred weight and
more.”
“A stag as large as a horse must really be a noble prize for a hunter,”
said Louis.
“Without his companion, the dog,” Jules put in, “man certainly could
not have caught such an animal in the chase.”
“The elk,” resumed Uncle Paul, “though common at that period in our
forests, is found to-day only in the wooded marshes of Russia and
Sweden. It also inhabits, and in greater numbers, the northern part of
America.
“You will notice that these two animals, the aurochs and the elk, which
were formerly spread over our own regions, are now settled in climates
much colder than ours. The few aurochs that have survived the general
destruction of their species graze in the woods of Lithuania; the elk
inhabits the extreme north of Europe and America. Transported to our
warmer climate, they would soon perish, being unable to endure a
temperature too high for them. Since they flourished here in ancient
times, the climate of our regions must at that distant epoch have been
colder, more severe, than it is to-day. Immense forests, always damp
and full of shade, were doubtless one of the causes of this more
rigorous climate. When these woods, impenetrable to the rays of the
sun, were felled by the ax of nascent civilization, the soil warmed up
freely and the temperature rose. But then the aurochs and elk, harassed
besides by man, who explored all their retreats, fled a country too
warm for them and took refuge in the cold fogs of the North.
“Despite this change of climate some animals have remained with us the
same as in the old time of the Gaels. In our day the same wolf still
howls with hunger in the woods, the same bears haunt the mountain
caves, the same wild boar, beset by a pack of hounds in some bushy
thicket, pokes its bristly snout out of the brake, sharpens its tusks,
and gnashes its teeth as formerly when a band of tattooed hunters flung
their stone hatchets at its head.”
“Those first inhabitants of France were tattooed like island savages?”
asked Jules.
“Yes, my friend. They decorated their bodies with designs in blue, a
pigment extracted from a plant called woad; and to make the decoration
ineffaceable they forced the coloring matter into the skin by pricking
themselves till the blood flowed.
“This practice, called tattooing, is still found in our day in many
countries, among tribes unacquainted with the benefits of civilization.
At the other end of the world, at our antipodes, the natives of New
Zealand are most expert in this kind of decoration. With a sharp awl,
impregnated with divers colors, they prick themselves with little stabs
and trace, point by point, fanciful designs which turn their skin into
veritable living embroidery. Red and blue spirals turn in inverse
directions from both sides of the forehead and continue in rose-work on
the cheeks. Little palm-leaves spread over the nostrils; a sun darts
its rays all around the chin; two or three little stars give a blue
tinge to the lower lip. The rest of the body is ornamented in the same
lavish manner: fantastic animals cover the middle of the back; a
tortoise pokes out its head and four feet in the hollow of the breast;
the hands and feet, pricked in fine tracery patterns, look as if
covered with open-work gloves and stockings. Our ancestors of the
stone-hatchet age decorated themselves very much like this.”
“Those poor New Zealanders,” remarked Emile, “must hurt themselves
dreadfully, disfiguring themselves like that.”
“The operation is indeed most painful, and yet they bear it without a
murmur. A single needle-prick makes us recoil; those rude savages
remain unmoved while the tattoo artist punctures their bodies with his
awl.”
“Why do they submit to such a torture?”
“Chiefly that they may cut a more dashing figure, present a more
formidable aspect, before the enemy. In certain archipelagoes of
Polynesia we should find still stranger customs. One tribe, for
example, gashes the face by removing narrow strips of skin so that the
cicatrized wounds form various patterns in hideous little red weals.
Others pass a small pointed stick through the cartilage of the
nostrils; others make a large hole in the lower lip and set a shell in
it.
“Had the ancient Gaels similar customs? It is quite possible; at least
it is certain that they tattooed themselves with woad. Certain customs
are sometimes so tenacious that after many centuries in the midst of
the most flourishing civilization tattooing has not entirely
disappeared even with us. On the strong arms of some of our laborers
are seen, any day, tattooed in blue, trade emblems and other devices.
They are, without doubt, the survivals of primitive customs.
“The Gaels had long, silky hair, like flaxen tow, and they gave it a
tinge of bright red by frequent washing in lime lye. Sometimes they
smeared it with rancid grease and let it hang down over their shoulders
in all its length; sometimes they gathered it above the forehead in a
high tuft or mane, to make themselves look taller and to give
themselves a more terrifying aspect.”
“In a book of travels,” said Jules, “I saw pictures of some North
American Indians with a tuft of hair like that on top of the head. The
Gaels, then, had the same custom?”
“Yes, my child. Thousands of years apart, in the forests of the Old
World and those of the New, the Gael and the Indian adopt the same
head-dress, a coil of hair over the forehead. When he dresses for the
combat, the Indian fastens to his top-knot of hair divers ornaments,
such as the wing of a hawk, the claw of a leopard, the teeth of a bear.
Thus doubtless the Gael likewise adorned his person when he made
himself fine for the urus-hunt or for battle with some neighboring
tribe.
“The Indian’s top-knot is an audacious defiance, a horrible bravado.
When the enemy is thrown to the ground, beaten down by a blow of the
club, the conqueror seizes him by his top-knot, cuts the skin all round
the head with the point of a sharp flint, then with a jerk pulls off
the bleeding scalp all in one piece.”
“Oh, how horrible!” cried Jules.
“This scalp is a trophy which he will dry in the smoke of his hut and
will wear hanging from his waist as token of his exploit. His position
in the tribe, his weight in the council, are proportioned to the number
of scalps taken from the enemy. Now you understand the fierce bravado
of the Indian with his top-knot of hair all gathered up and ready for
the horrible operation. Let any one offer to touch it, and he will soon
feel the weight of the wearer’s club.”
“I hope the Gaels did not have that abominable custom.”
“They had one that was worse: they carried not only the scalp, but the
whole head, which they dried in the sun, after nailing it by the ears
to the entrance of the hut in the midst of hunting trophies, boars’
heads and wolves’ heads. Those were their titles of nobility.”
“And we are descended from those frightful savages?”
“The tattooed Gaels with red hair, nailing the enemy’s head to their
door, are, as far back as history can show, the first inhabitants of
our country; we count them as among our earliest ancestors. Some of
their barbarous customs have come down to us, greatly modified, it is
true. I have just given you an example, in tattooing; I give you
another in the matter of trophies of the chase. After the manner of the
ancient Gaels, it is still the custom in the country to nail to the big
barn-doors wolves’ and foxes’ heads and the dead bodies of hawks and
owls.”
“Those who do that,” said Louis, “little suspect to what horrible
custom their practice is related.”
“Your tattooed hunters interest me very much,” Emile declared. “Their
houses, dress, furniture—how about all those things?”
“In those wretched times a shelter under rocks, a natural excavation, a
grotto, were the first dwelling-places. But there came a day when those
wild retreats were found insufficient, and human ingenuity made its
first attempts in the art of building. To provide oneself with a
shelter was not enough; it was necessary above all to maintain an
unremitting state of defense. The forests were overrun with formidable
animals, and there was perpetual warfare between neighboring tribes. As
a safeguard against surprise, wherever there were lakes, the houses
were built on piling in the middle of the water.
“It must have taken a prodigious expenditure of energy for man, as yet
so poorly provided with tools, to build these lake villages, or
lacustrine villages, as they are called. With a stone ax the tree that
was to be felled was laboriously girdled at the base, and then the
application of fire completed the process. Whole days and perhaps the
united efforts of a number of workers were necessary to obtain one
joist such as a wood-cutter would now turn out with a few strokes of
his steel ax. But with their tools of flint, hardly hitting the wood
and falling to pieces with the slightest maladroit blow, it was an
enormous undertaking for them. They were in about the same plight that
our carpenters would be in if the latter were obliged to cut down and
trim an oak with nothing but an old rusty knife. I leave you to
imagine, then, the labor and patience expended in obtaining the
thousands of joists needed in this piling. Apparently each head of a
family furnished one as his share, which gave him the right to erect
his hut on the common building-lot. At a later period, perhaps, in
order to extend the area of the straggling village as the population
increased, the furnishing of a new pile was required of each adult male
inhabitant. It was the extraordinary contribution, the sacred debt,
that he was obliged to pay once in his lifetime.
“The piles, pointed and hardened in the fire at one end, were dragged
to the edge of the lake, where canoes of plaited wicker towed them to
the chosen spot. There they were stood on end and driven into the soft
mud until the tops were on a level with the water. Finally the spaces
between the multitude of piles were filled with stones. The whole
formed an artificial islet of great solidity, or rather a shoal
submerged and covered with several feet of water. On the tops of the
piles, just above the general level, cross-beams were laid, then boughs
of trees, and on top of these beaten earth. Finally, on this artificial
soil, beneath which circulated the waters of the lake, dwellings were
erected.
“They were round or oval huts, made of a framework of interlacing
branches and a layer of rich earth. A single opening, very low, through
which one had to crawl, gave access to an interior, not unlike our
baker’s oven.
“The furnishing corresponded with the rudeness of the dwelling. Big
tun-bellied pots of black clay variegated with grains of white sand
held the provisions, which consisted of aurochs-flesh dried in the sun,
beech-nuts, and hazel-nuts. These pots were rudely made by hand without
any potter’s wheel to give them a regular outline. Thick, misshapen,
unsteady, they had an uneven surface and bore the finger-marks of those
who had molded them. Some attempts at ornamentation appeared on the
best jars, and took the form of a row of imprints made with the end of
the thumb on the still soft clay, or a line of angular marks engraved
with a thorn. The rest of the work was not less simple. To give our
pottery, however slight its value, more consistency and hardness, we
bake it in a very hot oven; we also coat it with a glaze to make it
impermeable. The inhabitants of the lake villages were content to
expose their pieces of wet clay to the rays of the sun until dry,
without baking or glazing. Hence it was a sorry kind of pottery, good
for the keeping of provisions, but incapable of holding water or of
being used over the fire.”
“How did they manage, then,” asked Jules, “to get hot water and cook
their food?”
“When one is unprovided with the invaluable saucepan, when one is
without even those homely utensils that we think so little of, despite
the inestimable service they render us, one imitates the Eskimos of
Greenland, who cook their viands in a little skin bag.”
“But that queer kind of pot would burn on the fire,” asserted Emile.
“They are very careful not to put it on the fire. Stones are heated
red-hot in the fire, and after they are thus heated they are popped
into the little bag containing water and food to be cooked. After
cooling off they are taken out to be reheated and dropped once more
into the water, which finally boils. The result of such cooking is a
mixture of soot, mud, ashes, and half-raw flesh; but with their hearty
appetites the Eskimos are not over-particular. Besides, if they
entertain a guest of distinction they begin by licking off with the
tongue all the dirt on the pieces destined for him. Whoever should
refuse to accept what was offered him after this extraordinary act of
courtesy in cleaning it, would be regarded as an impolite, ill-bred
person.”
“Bah! the dirty things!” cried Emile. “I will take good care never to
be one of their guests.”
“And the tattooed hunters cooked in that way?” Jules inquired.
“For want of proper utensils they apparently employed similar means.
But let us finish our inspection of the inside of the aquatic hut.
“The highest point in the roof is pierced for the passage of smoke from
the fireplace situated in the center of the hut, between two stones on
a bed of beaten earth, which prevents the floor, made of branches, from
catching fire. On the walls are hung the hardwood tomahawk, flint
hatchets, bone arrows, and the net of bark thongs, still damp from
fishing in the lake and ornamented on the edges with round pierced
stones. On the branching antlers of a stag the clothes are hung,
consisting of leopards’ and wolves’ skins with the hair on. In the most
sheltered corner rush mats and furs carpet the floor for the night’s
rest. Finally, in front of the door the little wicker boat bobs up and
down. Into this boat its owners can step right from their threshold.
“The straggling village, in fact, instead of being built on a
continuous artificial soil, is cut up into numerous passages of open
water; the village streets are canals. To pass from one quarter to
another, or merely to visit one’s neighbor, one must go by water. So
all day long there is a continual coming and going of boats from one
group of huts to another. There is no less movement between the village
and the shores of the lake, whither the men go a-hunting and whence
they return with their boats laden with venison, when the aurochs or
elk has succumbed to the combined exertions of men and dogs.
“Thus, in prehistoric times, were settlements established on the
various lakes of France, and, still more, of Switzerland—lakes large
enough to hold these villages by the hundred. To-day the fisherman
whose line ripples their limpid waters sees in the blue depths, amid a
great mass of stones, the tops of piles carbonized by the centuries,
and large, bulging pieces of earthenware, which he breaks with his oar
without suspecting their venerable origin. That is what is left us of
the ancient lake villages.”