98 THE HUNTER 



deliberately grind stones for club heads, axe 

 heads, and mortars. Still worse, the debauched 

 Eskimo grind and carve stone lamps, but in 

 their heathen bhndness use bone and ivory 

 for the heads of harpoons and bird darts. The 

 savages I have known belonged to the Old Bone 

 Age. 



How then with his slow feet and poor 

 weapons was the hunter to surprise the alert 

 sentries of a pony herd, get within range before 

 they fled like the wind, or drive a bone-tipped 

 spear through the shagg}^ hair ? 



It seems to me that man, like other hunting 

 animals, despairing of getting meat from a 

 pony herd on the range, would lie in ambush 

 near the watering places, and where the ponies 

 had to string out on a narrow trail they were 

 caught at a disadvantage. There spear and 

 arrow could earn abundant meat. Outside 

 the bush, too, the valley ^dr canon walls had 

 caves and defensible places where a tribe could 

 lodge within easy reach of game, water and 

 fuel. 



In the South-western desert of America I 

 have seen hundreds of cave and chff villages, 

 some even occupied by surviving tribes whose 

 methods of hunting and location and defence 

 would correspond with those of the more 



