PRIMEVAL MAN 205 



knew only in an incalculably remote past. My 

 gun-bearers were really men such as those of 

 later Palaeolithic times. Now and then I spent 

 days with hunters whose lives were led under con 

 ditions that the people of my race had not faced 

 for ages; probably not since before, certainly 

 not since immediately after, the close of the 

 last glacial epoch. The number and variety 

 of the great game, the terror inspired by some 

 of the beasts of prey, the bulk and majesty of 

 some of the beasts of the chase, were such as 

 are unknown in the rest of the modern world; 

 and nothing like them has been seen in the 

 western and northern world since the Pleisto 

 cene. 



Many of these great and beautiful beasts 

 were of kinds which either have developed in 

 Africa itself, and have never wandered to the 

 other continents, or else had disappeared from 

 these other continents before man appeared 

 upon the earth. But three of the most char 

 acteristic of these beasts, the lion, the ele 

 phant, and the horse, were spread over almost 

 the whole of this planet at the time when man 

 as man had fairly begun his hunting. These 

 three beasts then abounded in Europe and in 

 Asia, in North America, and in South America. 

 In each of these continents they were among 



