carrying water for him. By and by, except on unusual occasions , the men never carried any water at all, leaving the task to the women and larger children. Lop Ear and I were independent. We carried water only for ourselves, and we often mocked the young water carriers when they were called away from play to fill the gourds.
Progress was slow with us. We played through life, even the adults, much in the same way that children play, and we played as none of the other animals played. What little we learnt was usually in the course of play, and was due to our curiosityand keenness of appreciation. For that matter, the one big invention of the horde, during the time I lived with it, was the use of gourds. At first we stored only water in the gourds – in imitation of old Marrow Bone.
But one day someone of the women – I do not know which one – filled a gourd with blackberries and carried it to her cave. In no time all the women were carrying berries and nuts and roots in the gourds. The idea, once started, had to go on. Another evolution of the carrying receptacle was due to the women. Without doubt, some woman’s gourd was too small, or else she had forgotten her gourd; but be that as it may, she bent two great leaves together, pinning the seams with twigs, and carried home a bigger quantity of berries than could have been contained in the largest gourd.
So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation of supplies during the years I lived with the Folk. It never entered anybody’s head to weave a basket out of willow withies. Sometimes the men and women tied tough vines about the bundles of ferns and branches that they carried to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten or twenty generations we might have worked up to the weaving of baskets. And of this, one thing is sure: if once we wove withies into baskets, the next and inevitable step would have been the weaving of cloth. Clothes would have followed, and with covering our nakedness would have come modesty.
Thus was momentum gained in the younger world. But we were without this momentum. We were just getting started, and we could not go far in a single generation. We were without weapons, without fire, and in the raw beginnings of speech. The device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled when I think of it.
Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To showyou how fortuitous was development in those days let me state that had it not been for the gluttony of Lop Ear I might have brought about the domestication of the dog. And this was something that the Fire People who lived to the north-east had not yet achieved. They were without dogs; this I knew from observation. But let me tell you how Lop Ear’s gluttony possibly set back our social development many generations.
Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to the south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. These were little frequented for two reasons. First of all, there was no food there of the kind we ate; and next, those rocky hills were filled with the lairs of carnivorous beasts. But Lop Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day. We would not have strayed had we not been teasing a tiger. Please do not laugh. It was old Sabre Tooth himself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon him in the forest, early in the morning, and from the safety of the branches overhead we chattered down at him our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an infernal row and warning all the forest dwellers that old Sabre Tooth was coming.
We spoilt his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his tail, and sometimes he paused and stared up at us quietly for a long time, as if debating in his mind some way by which he could get hold of us. But we only laughed and pelted him with twigs and the ends of branches.
This tiger-baiting was common sport among the Folk. Sometimes half the horde would
Progress was slow with us. We played through life, even the adults, much in the same way that children play, and we played as none of the other animals played. What little we learnt was usually in the course of play, and was due to our curiosityand keenness of appreciation. For that matter, the one big invention of the horde, during the time I lived with it, was the use of gourds. At first we stored only water in the gourds – in imitation of old Marrow Bone.
But one day someone of the women – I do not know which one – filled a gourd with blackberries and carried it to her cave. In no time all the women were carrying berries and nuts and roots in the gourds. The idea, once started, had to go on. Another evolution of the carrying receptacle was due to the women. Without doubt, some woman’s gourd was too small, or else she had forgotten her gourd; but be that as it may, she bent two great leaves together, pinning the seams with twigs, and carried home a bigger quantity of berries than could have been contained in the largest gourd.
So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation of supplies during the years I lived with the Folk. It never entered anybody’s head to weave a basket out of willow withies. Sometimes the men and women tied tough vines about the bundles of ferns and branches that they carried to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten or twenty generations we might have worked up to the weaving of baskets. And of this, one thing is sure: if once we wove withies into baskets, the next and inevitable step would have been the weaving of cloth. Clothes would have followed, and with covering our nakedness would have come modesty.
Thus was momentum gained in the younger world. But we were without this momentum. We were just getting started, and we could not go far in a single generation. We were without weapons, without fire, and in the raw beginnings of speech. The device of writing lay so far in the future that I am appalled when I think of it.
Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. To showyou how fortuitous was development in those days let me state that had it not been for the gluttony of Lop Ear I might have brought about the domestication of the dog. And this was something that the Fire People who lived to the north-east had not yet achieved. They were without dogs; this I knew from observation. But let me tell you how Lop Ear’s gluttony possibly set back our social development many generations.
Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but to the south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. These were little frequented for two reasons. First of all, there was no food there of the kind we ate; and next, those rocky hills were filled with the lairs of carnivorous beasts. But Lop Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day. We would not have strayed had we not been teasing a tiger. Please do not laugh. It was old Sabre Tooth himself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon him in the forest, early in the morning, and from the safety of the branches overhead we chattered down at him our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an infernal row and warning all the forest dwellers that old Sabre Tooth was coming.
We spoilt his hunting for him, anyway. And we made him good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his tail, and sometimes he paused and stared up at us quietly for a long time, as if debating in his mind some way by which he could get hold of us. But we only laughed and pelted him with twigs and the ends of branches.
This tiger-baiting was common sport among the Folk. Sometimes half the horde would
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