Ill II 



_i;o 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



would be a mere pastime. He may have 

 bestridden the wild horse, which seems to 

 have abounded at the time in France, and 

 he may have launched his canoe on the waters 

 of the Atlantic. His experience and memory 

 might extend back a century or more, and his 

 traditional lore might go back to the times of 

 the first mother of our race. Did he live in 

 that wide Post- Pliocene continent which ex- 

 tended westward through Ireland ? Did he 

 know and had he visited the nations that lived 

 in the valley of the great Gihon, that ran down 

 the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless 

 river which flowed through the Dover Straits ? 

 Had he visited or seen from afar the great 

 island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost 

 see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? 

 Or did he live at a later time, after the Post- 

 Pliocene subsidence, and when the land had 

 assumed its present form? In that case he 

 could have told us of the great deluge, of the 

 huge animals of the antediluvian world — known 

 to him only by tradition — and of the diminished 

 strength and longevity of men in his compar- 

 atively modern days. We can but conjecture 

 all this. But, mute though they may be as to 

 the details of their lives, the man of Cro- 



