Ran's clumsy tackle was only a beginning. Later on, the sea people made fish-hooks in many ways. One was to tie a sharp thorn, at an angle, to the end of a bit of stick, fastening it firmly with wrappings of sinew, or gut. Another was to make the same sort of a hook out of bone. Still another was to carve a hook from stone, with a barb on it, like the barbs they made on their stone arrow heads, so that the hook would not pull loose. Long cords of gut, or twisted grass served them as lines. Soon the sea people were fishing from rafts, in the river, or from the rocks along the sea coast, and as they caught more, and bigger fish, they found it easier to get food in this way, than by hunting in the back country for wild animals. Thus they had fewer and fewer skins and furs to keep them warm, and this fact caused them to discover a way of plaiting and weaving cloth out of the tough marsh grasses, to use as a covering for their bodies in winter time. Isn't it curious to think that learning how to make fish-hooks should also have taught them weaving? and yet it did, as you can see. All during the cold weather in the valley Ka-Ma and his wife had been used to wearing cloaks of fur, had been in the habit of sleeping in warm, cosy caves, in which, in the coldest weather, a fire was kept burning. The hair on their bodies, like that of all the cave people, had grown thin, and no longer served to keep them warm. Their children by the sea were born the same way, with very little hair; they could not stand the bitter cold of winter without some covering for their bodies. At first, when the sea tribe was small, it was an easy matter to go into the back country, far up the river, and kill bears and other wild animals for their furs. As the years passed, and the tribe grew larger and larger, this was no longer easy, for the young men of the tribe, while brave swimmers and fishermen, had forgotten, or never learned, how to attack and kill the wild beasts which lived inland. So the sea people had to look about them, to find some other material out of which they could make clothes. From the time they built their first brush huts, they had learned how to plait together the long reeds, in making roofs. Later, the art of fishing taught them how to twist the finer grasses, long and tough, into thin strong cords. By tying a row of these cords between two poles, and then weaving other cords in and out across them, the sea people found they could make a thick, tough, durable sort of cloth, like grass matting. It was not warm, like fur, but it would keep off the cold rains, and was much better than no covering at all.