the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet

chestnut and the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the

gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their

squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the

tribe, a full day's journey down the river, and up the mountains there

were none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that

ancient time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after

generation, from one squatting-place to another, from the

south-westward. And the animals that held the land, the hippopotamus and

rhinoceros of the river valleys, the horses of the grass plains, the

deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in the branches, the cattle

of the uplands, feared him but little--let alone the mammoths in the

mountains and the elephants that came through the land in the

summer-time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but the

rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw

but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all the weapons he had

against hoof and horn, tooth and claw?

Andoo, the huge cave bear, who lived in the cave up the gorge, had never

even seen a man in all his wise and respectable life, until midway

through one night, as he was prowling down the gorge along the cliff

edge, he saw the glare of Eudena's fire upon the ledge, and Eudena red

and shining, and Ugh-lomi, with a gigantic shadow mocking him upon the

white cliff, going to and fro, shaking his mane of hair, and waving the

axe of stone--the first axe of stone--while he chanted of the killing

of Uya. The cave bear was far up the gorge, and he saw the thing

Tales of Space and Time