"Are these the highest forms of life that the country contains? What being is that sitting on yon fallen tree? His long arms are in front of his hairy body, and his hands between his knees; while his long legs are dangling down. His complexion is darker than an Indian's; his beard short, and like the hair of his body; the unkempt hair of his head is bushy and thick; his eyebrows are short and crisp; and with his sloping forehead and brutal countenance, he seems like the caricature of a man, rather than an actual human being. "Beneath the shade of a spreading chestnut we may behold a group--one old man ... and women and children, lounging and lying upon the ground. How dirty! What forbidding countenances!--more like furies than women. One young man, with a stone axe, is separating the bark from a neighboring tree. Others, agile as monkeys, are climbing the trees, and passing from branch to branch, as they gather the wild fruit that abounds on every side. Some are catching fish in the shallows of the river, and yell with triumph as they hold their captives by the gills, dragging them to the shore."[63] They have improved their language, and instead of the rude signs and undistinguishable sounds of the glacial, may now be heard short, but occasional sentences, which were the forerunners of the polished tongues of modern Europe. CHAPTER VIII. REINDEER EPOCH. The glaciers, to a limited extent, have again advanced. The gigantic animals of the past age have either disappeared or are fast becoming extinct. The great cave-bear, cave-lion, cave-hyena, mammoth, and woolly-haired rhinoceros have almost become extinct. They have given way to a less fierce and less gigantic fauna. The advance of the glaciers is announced by the numerous herds of reindeer which are overrunning the forests of Western Europe, and extending as far south as the Pyrenees. In the forests there now existed the horse, bison, wild bull (_Bos primigenius_), musk-ox, elk, deer, chamois, ibex, beaver, hamster-rat, lemming, and many others. These animals were capable of withstanding and flourishing in a rigorous climate. When the glaciers were again broken up and the climate became warmer, the reindeer, musk-ox, elk, chamois, wild-goat, hamster-rat, and lemming retired to the high northern latitudes in close proximity to the snow, or else to the lofty summits of great mountain-chains.