61 



into being-. Tlie savnge mind was awakened and .stinndated l^y man}' new 

 applications for their rude weapons or for the results of the chase. Unlike 

 subsisting on echini, which cannot be kept for future use, but must be eaten 

 the day they are secured, the possibility of laying up a store of dry iish 

 would ease the gnawings of necessity, give time for mechanical Avork and 

 invention, and would often preserve life, which must, under similar exigen- 

 cies in the ]>receding epoch, have been lost by fomine or sacrificed to 

 avert the starvation of other individuals. A store of prof isions necessitates 

 a store-house, a protection against the ravens and the weather. Here we 

 have the first intimations of that enforced progress which is the result of 

 preceding progress, and which, in the present instance, may have been the 

 compelling cause which finally led to the construction of permanent winter- 

 dweUings and villages. But the absence of means for lighting such dwellings, 

 drift-wood being too valuable and scarce to use for fires, and lamps not being 

 invented, would retard the savages' progress in that direction. The boldest 

 of them would hesitate to immure himself in unnecessary darkness, which 

 his animism would not have failed to people with innumerable evil or mis- 

 chievous spirits. At that time, and before the blubber of the sea-animals 

 was utilized for oil, it would doubtless have seemed the extremest extrava- 

 gance to devote to burning, the fish-oil which was their greatest luxury. 



The right of the strongest being then in all probabijity the only law, 

 and their stores being a coveted prize, the necessity of watchfulness and 

 self-defense or ready escape would tend to determine the savage against 

 putting himself in an underground house, where he might be killed 

 "like a rat in a hole" without hope of defense or escape, or in which he 

 might sleep undisturbed while his hard-earned stores — necessarily kept for 

 dryness above ground — were earned off by a thief in the night. Add to this 

 the probability that it was only about this time that the opportunities for 

 subsistence would have rendered it possible to congregate large communities 

 in one locality for mutual protection, a work of time, slowly-growing confi- 

 dence, and mutual trust, and it may readily be seen that the fishermen were 

 only approaching the social state which made fixed villages possible. At 

 the same time, the increasing means of subsistence with the improved methods 

 of capture would obviate the cruel necessity of cannibalism, if it had pre- 



