192 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



of whom were physically, as far as we can see, 

 abreast of the more advanced races of to-day. 



Surely, this phase in the vast epic of life 

 development on this planet offers a fascinating 

 study. The history of man himself is by far 

 the most absorbing of all histories, and it can- 

 not be understood without some knowledge of 

 Lis prehistory. Moreover, the history of the 

 rest of the animal world also yields a drama of 

 intense and vivid interest to all scholars gifted 

 with imagination. The two histories — the pre- 

 history of humanity and the history of the cul- 

 minating phase of non-human mammalian life — 

 were interwoven during the dim ages when man 

 was slowly groping upward from the bestial to 

 the half-divine. 



It was my good fortune throughout one year 

 of my life to roam, rifle in hand, over the empty, 

 sunlit African wastes, and at night to camp by 

 palm and thorn-tree on the banks of the African 

 rivers. Day after day I watched the thronging 

 herds of wild creatures and the sly, furtive 

 human life of the wilderness. Often and often, 

 as I so watched, my thoughts went back through 

 measureless time to the ages when the western 

 lands, where my people now dwell, and the 

 northern lands of the eastern world, where their 

 remote forefathers once dwelt, were filled with 



