From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age: A Story of the Missing Link, Showing the First Steps in Industry, Commerce, Government, Religion and the Arts; With an Account of the Great Expedition From Cocoanut Hill and the Wars in Alligator SwampBierbower, Austin
Science
From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age: A Story of the Missing Link, Showing the First Steps in Industry, Commerce, Government, Religion and the Arts; With an Account of the Great Expedition From Cocoanut Hill and the Wars in Alligator Swamp
Bierbower, Austin
Prehistoric peoples -- Fiction
Oko, the greedy fellow mentioned, suggested that they collect stores for
the whole campaign, and take them along, since they might not find fruits
so abundant as they proceeded. “There is plenty in the Swamp,” replied
Koree, who had recently passed that way. “The whole region between the
Ammi and the Tali abounds with things to eat. Let us not, therefore,
burden ourselves with what we may gather as we need it.”
[Illustration: THE GREEDY OKO.]
Determined, therefore, to forage as they went, and so to live at the
expense of beasts and reptiles, they proceeded on their march for several
days almost uninterrupted. They moved slowly, planning the details of
their campaign as they went.
Among those who took part in this expedition, and were prominent in the
counsels and events that followed, were these:
First was Cocoanut Scooper, the great hunter of the hills, who, if not
fierce in battle with wild beasts, was no less esteemed because of his
services in procuring provisions. He had scoured all the country round
about, and knew every tree and the quality of its fruit. He could at a
distance distinguish a palm, a walnut, a fig and a cinnamon tree; from
the appearance of a region he knew its value as a source of supplies; he
was expert in finding thickets where rabbits and other game abounded,
and he learned all the shoals of the Swamp where crabs and clams could
be taken. This man had charge of the commissaries, and looked out for
provisions for the expedition. During all their march his eye was on the
foliage of the forest, rather than on the trail of the Apes, looking for
something to eat rather than to fight.
Next was Fire-tamer, the bright-eyed hunter who took prisoner the
red-winged beast that feeds on wood, and, having caught him in his
lightning errand to earth, kept him a captive in the camp of the Ammi,
feeding him on brush and bark, and confining him within an earthen mound.
The all-devouring monster could not be satiated, but, after consuming all
the wood they could carry him, died when they stopped feeding him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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