A STORY OF THE STONE AGE

I--UGH-LOMI AND UYA

This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning

of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we

call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed

through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and

level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we

know by the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which

runs along the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey

was a range of hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped for

the better part of the year. The cores of its summits still remain as

Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill, and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the

range, below the grassy spaces where the wild horses grazed, were

forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and elm, and the thickets and dark

places hid the grizzly bear and the hyæna, and the grey apes clambered

through the branches. And still lower amidst the woodland and marsh and

open grass along the Wey did this little drama play itself out to the

end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand

years--if the reckoning of geologists is correct.

And in those days the spring-time was as joyful as it is now, and sent

the blood coursing in just the same fashion. The afternoon sky was blue

with piled white clouds sailing through it, and the southwest wind came

Tales of Space and Time-1