[Illustration]
In the course of the contest with the tigers, which lasted several years,
many improvements were made in the art of warfare, which afterwards
served the Apes in time of peace. After the experience of Shamboo and
others, who attacked unarmed the savage beasts, they found it advisable
to fight at a distance. Taking their position on trees, which was done
for safety, the problem was how to reach the enemy. They commonly
showered cocoanuts and other large fruits upon them, which, while
annoying to small animals, had little effect on tigers. They next carried
stones up the trees for missiles, which they dropped with some effect. In
time they became expert at throwing, and could strike a tiger’s head ten
paces off. Shoozoo claimed to have killed a hyena at a distance of many
alligators’ lengths with a rock larger than his head; but Shoozoo had a
reputation for lying, which was greatly developed during the war.
The Apes also broke off branches of trees, with which they pounded the
savage beasts, not only by throwing them from the trees as missiles, but
by using them as clubs, until they became skilled in the art of pounding,
as well as of making clubs. When catamounts, bears and other climbing
beasts attacked them on the trees, and fought paw to paw with them, they
used the stones as knives, and often cut their assailants fatally, having
learned to select sharp stones for this purpose, and, in time, to sharpen
them specially. Before the war they had used stones only to crack nuts.
But now they learned both to use them for many other purposes, and to
make them into the size and shape which best suited them.
The first manufactures of the Apes were thus of military implements,
their necessity being the mother of invention. In time of peace, however,
they found new uses for these implements, like their descendents who
afterwards beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks. The missiles with which they had attacked the tigers they
soon used for hunting, and in time for building. When they came down from
the trees, and lived more on the earth, they knocked cocoanuts down,
instead of climbing after them; they killed birds and rabbits by throwing
stones at them, instead of lying in wait for them, and they speared fish
with their clubs which they had learned to sharpen. They could thus act
at a greater distance, and so had more power, both to defend themselves
from wild beasts, and to obtain food.
Shoozoo, the liar just mentioned, told some wonderful stories of a stone
which he sharpened and the exploits he performed with it. He saw a lion,
he said, sleeping at the foot of a tree, when, throwing the stone, he cut
the tree from its stump, which, falling on the lion, killed him; and he
would have brought the dead lion to verify the story, but it was so big
that all the monkeys of Cocoanut Hill could not have carried it away; but
he showed the sharpened stone as evidence.
He related also that when hunting owls at night, after killing all
that were in the forest, and having nothing more to throw at, he threw
his stone at the moon, and hit it with such force that he cut off a
piece; and, as evidence of this, he pointed to the moon, which was,
indeed, seen to have a large piece gone, so that many Apes believed him
for once, though they knew he was habitually a liar. For the evidence
of their senses was generally deemed enough for the Apes. Shamboo,
however, doubted the story and asked Shoozoo why he did not bring home
the other piece of the moon. “When I cut it off,” he replied, “it fell
into the Swamp and was swallowed by an alligator. I expect to catch that
alligator, and then I will show you the rest of the moon.”
The Apes of Cocoanut Hill, however, who placed little confidence in
Shoozoo’s stories, placed less in his promises; although the next
generation, which accepted him as the founder of their religion, believed
him to be a better man, and accepted his stories as history and his
promises as prophecy; so that what was incredible to contemporaries
became indisputable to posterity; and the traditions that gathered
about his name were sufficient to silence the doubts in a generation
later which they had raised in a generation before. In course of time
the bigger stories only gained credence, the rest being forgotten; so
that what was received with most distrust was handed down with most
confidence; and the farther they got from the time of their performance
the easier it was thought to be to get at the truth about them.
For many generations every alligator that was killed was opened in
order to find the moon; and, though it was often claimed to be found,
there was never as much confidence in the story of its recovery as of
its loss; for the Apes early learned to distinguish between religious
stories, and only accepted those for which there was adequate evidence.
The uninterrupted testimony of the fathers, which had come down in
regular succession, and had never been doubted, was deemed the best
evidence. Apes have accordingly differed about the incidentals of the
story; for many accounts have come down about the details, which are not
to be reconciled; but as to the great essentials—that the holy Shoozoo
actually did knock off a piece of the moon, and that an alligator
swallowed it—there is a substantial agreement; and as often as the moon,
in generations later, appeared in crescent form, the festival of the Holy
Crescent was celebrated by throwing sharpened stones in the air in honor
of the great exploit of their Founder, Shoozoo.
But, though Shoozoo, who passed in one generation for a liar, and in
the next for a God, left a questionable heritage to the Apes, they
still retained out of his age something of substantial value. The use
of implements was invented, and the arts of making and using them were
handed down to Monkeys and Men.