Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
Animals, however, were very plentiful all around. Stags, elks, aurochs,
horses, and the large pachyderms multiplied very rapidly in the wide
solitudes, the pasture lands of which afforded them a constantly
renewed supply of food, and the beasts of prey in their turn found an
easy prey in the ruminants.15 The ways of animals do not change, and
the travellers who are exploring the interior of Africa tell us that
now, as in the day we are trying to recall, hundreds of elephants and
rhinoceroses congregate in a limited area, whilst innumerable herds of
giraffes, zebras, and gazelles graze peacefully in the presence of man,
whose destructive powers they have not yet learnt to dread.
Delegorgue speaks of one lake peopled by more than one hundred
hippopotami, and of a region less than three miles in diameter
containing six hundred elephants. Livingstone tells us that he saw
troops of more than four thousand antelopes pass at a time, and that
these animals showed absolutely no fear. We may give a yet more curious
instance. Captain Gordon Cumming, crossing the plains stretching away
on the north of the Cape, saw troops of gazelles and antelopes,
compelled by a long drought to migrate in search of the water
indispensable to them, and be describes with enthusiasm one of these
migrations, telling us that the plain was literally covered with
animals, the hurrying herds defiling before him in an endless stream.
On the evening of the same day, a yet more numerous herd passed by in
the same direction, the numbers of which were absolutely incalculable,
but which, according to Cumming, must have exceeded several hundred
thousand.
Such must have been animal life in Europe in Quaternary times. “Grand
indeed,” cries Hugh Miller, “was the fauna of the British Isles in
those days. Tigers, as large again as the biggest Asiatic species,
lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants, of nearly twice the bulk of
the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or Ceylon, roamed in
herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their way through the
primeval forest, and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami
as bulky and with as great tusks as those of Africa.”16
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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