76 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



provided for by nature as to food and clothing, were 

 in slavery to no man, lived in families bound together 

 by ties of affection, and were free to migrate over vast 

 territories according to the exigencies of the seasons. 

 They had some taste in dress and ornaments, and no 

 doubt enjoyed their clever carvings on bone and ivory 

 as much as any modern lovers of art their most 

 finished treasures. A Cro-magnon ' brave,' tall, mus- 

 cular and graceful in movement, clad in well-dressed 

 skins, ornamented with polished shells and ivory pen- 

 dants, with a pearly shell helmet, probably decked 

 with feathers, and armed with his flint-headed lance 

 and skull-cracker of reindeer antler handsomely 

 carved, must have been a somewhat noble savage, and 

 he must have rejoiced in the chase of the mammoth, 

 the rhinoceros, the bison, and the wild horse and 

 reindeer, and in launching his curiously-constructed 

 harpoons against the salmon and other larger fish that 

 haunted the rivers. 



Nor was he destitute of higher hopes. He laid 

 his dead reverently in the bosom of mother earth, 

 with such things as had been pleasant or useful in life, 

 and his rudimentary bible, or ' book of the dead/ must 

 have at least included the idea 'This corruptible 

 shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality. 1 

 That is the meaning of such funeral gifts in every 

 part of the world, and has always been so, as far as we 

 can learn. But the belief in immortality implies also 

 a belief in a God or gods. For if there is a spiritual 

 world for the dead, there must be a Power to care for 



