Of our wanderings in the great
swamp I have no clear knowledge.
When I strive to remember, I
have a riot of unrelated impressions
and a loss of time-value. I have
no idea of how long we were in
that vast everglade, but it must
have been for weeks. My memories
of what occurred invariably take
the form of nightmare. For untold
ages, oppressed by protean fear,
I am aware of wandering, endlessly
wandering, through a dank and
soggy wilderness, where poisonous
snakes struck at us, and animals
roared around us, and the mud
quaked under us and sucked at
our heels.
I know that we were turned
from our course countless times
by streams and lakes and slimy
seas. Then there were storms
and risings of the water over
great areas of the low-lying
lands; and there were periods
of hunger and misery when we
were kept prisoners in the trees
for days and days by these transient
floods.
Very strong upon me is one
picture. Large trees are about
us, and from their branches hang
gray filaments of moss, while
great creepers, like monstrous
serpents, curl around the trunks
and writhe in tangles through
the air. And all about is the
mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth
gases, and that heaves and sighs
with internal agitations. And
in the midst of all this are
a dozen of us. We are lean and
wretched, and our bones show
through our tight-stretched skins.
We do not sing and chatter and
laugh. We play no pranks. For
once our volatile and exuberant
spirits are hopelessly subdued.
We make plaintive, querulous
noises, look at one another,
and cluster close together. It
is like the meeting of the handful
of survivors after the day of
the end of the world.
This event is without connection
with the other events in the
swamp. How we ever managed to
cross it, I do not know, but
at last we came out where a low
range of hills ran down to the
bank of the river. It was our
river emerging like ourselves
from the great swamp. On the
south bank, where the river had
broken its way through the hills,
we found many sand-stone caves.
Beyond, toward the west, the
ocean boomed on the bar that
lay across the river's mouth.
And here, in the caves, we settled
down in our abiding-place by
the sea.
There were not many of us.
From time to time, as the days
went by, more of the Folk appeared.
They dragged themselves from
the swamp singly, and in twos
and threes, more dead than alive,
mere perambulating skeletons,
until at last there were thirty
of us. Then no more came from
the swamp, and Red-Eye was not
among us. It was noticeable that
no children had survived the
frightful journey.
I shall not tell in detail
of the years we lived by the
sea. It was not a happy abiding-place.
The air was raw and chill, and
we suffered continually from
coughing and colds. We could
not survive in such an environment.
True, we had children; but they
had little hold on life and died
early, while we died faster than
new ones were born. Our number
steadily diminished.
Then the radical change in
our diet was not good for us.
We got few vegetables and fruits,
and became fish-eaters. There
were mussels and abalones and
clams and rock-oysters, and great
ocean-crabs that were thrown
upon the beaches in stormy weather.
Also, we found several kinds
of seaweed that were good to
eat. But the change in diet caused
us stomach troubles, and none
of us ever waxed fat. We were
all lean and dyspeptic-looking.
It was in getting the big abalones
that Lop-Ear was lost. One of
them closed upon his fingers
at low-tide, and then the flood-tide
came in and drowned him. We found
his body the next day, and it
was a lesson to us. Not another
one of us was ever caught in
the closing shell of an abalone.
The Swift One and I managed
to bring up one child, a boy--at
least we managed to bring him
along for several years. But
I am quite confident he could
never have survived that terrible
climate. And then, one day, the
Fire People appeared again. They
had come down the river, not
on a catamaran, but in a rude
dug-out. There were three of
them that paddled in it, and
one of them was the little wizened
old hunter. They landed on our
beach, and he limped across the
sand and examined our caves.
They went away in a few minutes,
but the Swift One was badly scared.
We were all frightened, but none
of us to the extent that she
was. She whimpered and cried
and was restless all that night.
In the morning she took the child
in her arms, and by sharp cries,
gestures, and example, started
me on our second long flight.
There were eight of the Folk
(all that was left of the horde)
that remained behind in the caves.
There was no hope for them. Without
doubt, even if the Fire People
did not return, they must soon
have perished. It was a bad climate
down there by the sea. The Folk
were not constituted for the
coast-dwelling life.
We travelled south, for days
skirting the great swamp but
never venturing into it. Once
we broke back to the westward,
crossing a range of mountains
and coming down to the coast.
But it was no place for us. There
were no trees--only bleak headlands,
a thundering surf, and strong
winds that seemed never to cease
from blowing. We turned back
across the mountains, travelling
east and south, until we came
in touch with the great swamp
again.
Soon we gained the southern
extremity of the swamp, and we
continued our course south and
east. It was a pleasant land.
The air was warm, and we were
again in the forest. Later on
we crossed a low-lying range
of hills and found ourselves
in an even better forest country.
The farther we penetrated from
the coast the warmer we found
it, and we went on and on until
we came to a large river that
seemed familiar to the Swift
One. It was where she must have
come during the four years' absence
from the harde. This river we
crossed on logs, landing on side
at the large bluff. High up on
the bluff we found our new home
most difficult of access and
quite hidden from any eye beneath.
There is little more of my
tale to tell. Here the Swift
One and I lived and reared our
family. And here my memories
end. We never made another migration.
I never dream beyond our high,
inaccessible cave. And here must
have been born the child that
inherited the stuff of my dreams,
that had moulded into its being
all the impressions of my life--or
of the life of Big-Tooth, rather,
who is my other-self, and not
my real self, but who is so real
to me that often I am unable
to tell what age I am living
in.
I often wonder about this line
of descent. I, the modern, am
incontestably a man; yet I, Big-Tooth,
the primitive, am not a man.
Somewhere, and by straight line
of descent, these two parties
to my dual personality were connected.
Were the Folk, before their destruction,
in the process of becoming men?
And did I and mine carry through
this process? On the other hand,
may not some descendant of mine
have gone in to the Fire People
and become one of them? I do
not know. There is no way of
learning. One thing only is certain,
and that is that Big-Tooth did
stamp into the cerebral constitution
of one of his progeny all the
impressions of his life, and
stamped them in so indelibly
that the hosts of intervening
generations have failed to obliterate
them.
There is one other thing of
which I must speak before I close.
It is a dream that I dream often,
and in point of time the real
event must have occurred during
the period of my living in the
high, inaccessible cave. I remember
that I wandered far in the forest
toward the east. There I came
upon a tribe of Tree People.
I crouched in a thicket and watched
them at play. They were holding
a laughing council, jumping up
and down and screeching rude
choruses.
Suddenly they hushed their
noise and ceased their capering.
They shrank down in fear, and
quested anxiously about with
their eyes for a way of retreat.
Then Red-Eye walked in among
them. They cowered away from
him. All were frightened. But
he made no attempt to hurt them.
He was one of them. At his heels,
on stringy bended legs, supporting
herself with knuckles to the
ground on either side, walked
an old female of the Tree People,
his latest wife. He sat down
in the midst of the circle. I
can see him now, as I write this,
scowling, his eyes inflamed,
as he peers about him at the
circle of the Tree People. And
as he peers he crooks one monstrous
leg and with his gnarly toes
scratches himself on the stomach.
He is Red-Eye, the atavism.
End of Project Gutenberg etext
of Before Adam by London
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