[Illustration]
After the savage beasts had been driven from the region of Cocoanut
Hill, and the Apes had come down from the trees, and were habitually on
the ground, they found themselves encountering new dangers. The snakes
were troublesome. The snakes had, indeed, been troublesome before, but
it was mainly when they climbed the trees for birds’ nests or fruits.
The Apes did not then encounter them so often, and amid the greater
dangers from the four-footed beasts, did not find it necessary to make
war against them. But now, when the Apes walked more on the ground, they
met the snakes oftener, and under more disagreeable circumstances. The
snakes, moreover, had greatly multiplied since the destruction of the
savage beasts, many of which devoured, or fought with, snakes, or else
lived on the same food. With the departure, accordingly, of the enemies
of the serpents, and their increase of sustenance, the serpents became
powerful, and at last threatened to drive the Apes from the region. It
became dangerous to walk abroad, especially near the Swamp. At night
they disturbed the slumbers of the Apes. Shoozoo declared that he once
found two in his ear when he awoke, and that he had swallowed some big
ones during the night, although Shamboo declared contemptuously that he
only had worms.
Many precautions were, from time to time, taken against the snakes. Some
of the Apes persisted in still sleeping in the trees. Most of them,
however, sought holes in the ground and caves in the rocks, which they
fortified by piling brush and earth at the entrance; while others, not
finding holes conveniently at hand, dug them and covered them with brush,
so as to form a mound. The race had thus begun to build, and one of the
first arts—architecture—was founded. The home originated in a fight
against the serpent.
The snakes, however, soon attacked these homes, and all the more eagerly
because of the food stored in them. For the Apes found that they could
put their structures to many uses not before known. They would hold their
provisions, as well as themselves, and would protect such provisions
from the weather, as well as from the snakes, and so preserve them for
a longer time. Their homes accordingly became store-houses, and this
facility for keeping provisions by storage stimulated the collection of
them. Instead of gathering only what they wanted to eat at the time, the
Apes now picked up all they could find, and placed it in their dug-outs.
They soon learned to allow nothing to go to waste, and became economical.
They even collected when they did not want anything, from the mere fact
that they could store it, and thus became provident. They believed they
might want in the future, and so often stored large quantities; for
some Apes early became avaricious. They got in time to be as proud of
their possessions as of their homes, and often gathered from a feeling
of ambition. Shoozoo claimed that he had enough fruits in his mound to
feed all the Apes of Cocoanut Hill for a lifetime; which nobody of that
generation believed, and nobody of the next doubted.
These great quantities of fruits, we say, attracted the snakes, who were
soon found more plentiful about the homes than about the swamps. Wealth
always has its enemies, and a snake no more than a man, will work for
what he can get more easily. It was thought easier to get cocoanuts in
Shoozoo’s dug-out than by climbing a tree.
One day an ape, who had made a large collection, found, on returning
home, that all his store was gone. The snakes had broken in and eaten
what they could, and destroyed the rest by half eating it. The only sign
of the thieves was an old snake which had eaten so much that he could not
get away, and lay, like a drunken man, helpless on the ground. The ape
soon dispatched him; but that did not satisfy the ape. He was indignant,
and in his sense of suffering wrong we have the first appearance of
the ethical sentiment. The sense of wrong in others appears before we
recognize it in ourselves. The snakes did not feel the wrong; nor did the
same monkey when afterwards he went to steal some of Shoozoo’s fruit (and
found none), although he felt an indignation at Shoozoo that might be
called an incipient sense of the wrong of falsehood. He wanted to charge
Shoozoo with lying; but as that would have disclosed his own theft, or
attempt at it, he suppressed his indignation in his prudence.
[Illustration: THE ROBBERS OF THE AMMI.]
Other depredations were committed by the snakes, so that almost every
ape soon had a property grievance. Added to this was a growing personal
animosity between the Apes and the Snakes. As they had frequent contests
over the fruits, they had learned to fight, and so to hate, each other,
and finally to look upon each other as public enemies.
Nor was all the fault with the snakes. For as soon as the Apes got
to accumulating, they scoured the swamps as well as the hills for
provisions, and so met the Snakes in their own element, who had to fight
for the ungathered fruits as well as the gathered. In fact, through their
strongly developed acquisitiveness, the Apes had drained the country so
generally of its productions, that there was not enough left to support
the Snakes, so that the latter had to become criminals and attack the
gathered stores. Whenever the rich gather up everything so close as to
leave nothing for the poor, the latter will turn criminals, whether they
be snakes or men, and will steal from the rich, whether these be men or
monkeys.
There, accordingly, sprang up an antagonism between the Snakes and the
Monkeys, which had all the bitterness of class feeling, as well as of
race prejudice, and soon an irrepressible conflict was impending. The
Monkeys demanded the extirpation of the Snakes as violently as they had,
in the preceding campaign, demanded that of the tigers; and from one end
of the highlands to the other was heard the cry, “The snakes must go.”
“Steppers and crawlers,” said Shamboo, “cannot live in the same country.
If there is anything a monkey hates it is to tramp on a snake. Only
to-day one bit me in the heel, and to-morrow I shall crush his head.
Enmity is declared between our race and theirs. A snake in the grass can
never be loved by our seed; and so, until there shall be no more Snakes,
or else no more Monkeys, the conflict must go on. We came down from the
trees to the ground only to find others who had got still closer to the
ground, and were climbing the land as we had climbed the trees; and it is
a question whether belly or feet shall walk the earth. When the Apes got
down off the trees they got up on their feet; and we do not mean to again
walk through life on four feet to look for snakes.”