kind of animals with whose remains his own are found, that man lived in northern Europe towards the close of the later Ice Age, if not earlier, and therefore hundreds of thousands of years ago; although the actual time of his arrival can never be known.

We do not know to what race the men who first trod the soil of Europe belonged. They came with the mammoth, cave-bear, &c., and we cannot tell whither they went. There is, however, some clue to those who followed them. These were dwellers in caves, living chiefly on the flesh of the reindeer, which creature they hunted as far as the northern land of bitter cold, where the snow never melts and the blessed light shines but six months in the year. The manners and customs and general kind of life of the tribes found there at this day, known as the Eskimos, are so very like all that can be learnt about the old cave-men of what is called the Reindeer Period, that there is good reason for believing that the one is descended from the other.

After a time which years fail to reckon, when the waters, ever working 'without haste and with

cave-men.

out rest,' had cut a channel between England and France, there came to Europe from the East race after race of people who were far higher than the The lowest among them, of whom traces are found along the shores of the Baltic Sea, had tamed the dog, while those who lived in houses built upon piles driven into the bottom of lakes in Switzerland and elsewhere, had learnt to till the soil.

Mankind at first were few in number, but as the mouths to be fed multiplied faster than the food wherewith to fill them, it was needful either that the ground should be tilled or that some should leave in search of food elsewhere, and since man must advance somewhat before he becomes a husbandman, the latter course would be chosen.

So, hunger-driven or forced away by change of climate, and also, it may be, led on by desire to see what the world was like and to find excitement in chasing animals to kill and eat, some would leave, and thus give up a settled kind of life, which tends to peaceful progress, for a roving life. The pressing wants of the body urged them

to wander far and wide, and soon long distances would divide the hunters. This would lead to the peopling of the world in many parts, and in the course of long ages to the fixing of wandering tribes wherever food was to be had, and the land seemed fair and fertile.

From this we may understand how the earliest dwellers in Europe were driven thither. They were but rude savages, living by hunting and fishing. Man is first of all a hunter, then he finds out that some of the animals which he kills for food can be made useful to him in other ways, so he tames them. This leads him to follow the more settled life of a shepherd, and when he becomes a tiller of the soil, or farmer, he stays in one place. There the family grows into a tribe and the tribe into a nation.

Thus far I hope to have made clear to you the mode in which mankind slowly overspread various parts of the world, and I have now to give you, in as simple a form as the subject will permit, an account of some ancient peoples who have played a markedly eventful part in the history of mankind.

I shall take you back to the time when man had outgrown his first rude savage state; but, so many are the years, we shall still be a long way beyond the line where the history of nations stands out clearly before us. The story is worth your careful attention, for to know who these peoples were and what they did, is to learn the thoughts of ancestors whose words we speak and to find out how we have become what we

are.

The old writers, in speaking of the world,' took for granted that it did not extend beyond the countries of which they knew. Now although its real size and shape are well known to us, we are too apt to think only of that part of it where the highest races have lived, and to leave out the other parts with their millions of people still in a savage or half-civilized state. This must be borne in mind in reading what follows, since the limits of this book forbid my stating what is known of the manner of life and religions of the numerous races scattered over the northern regions of Asia, over large tracts of Africa and America, and throughout the many islands of the southern seas.

It is certain that the people to be presently described were not the first civilizers, but were young as compared to Egypt and China, and built up much of their future greatness out of the ruins of more ancient cultures. For apart from the rude savages whose early struggles made progress easier to those who came after them, there are found over wide regions of Europe and Asia the traces of a people who have immensely helped the advancement of mankind. I am now speaking of the ancestors of the great Mongol race, of the Tatars (wrongly called Tartars) and of the many tribes of Northern Asia, of Southern India, Malay, and other parts of South-western Asia; also of the Finns, Lapps, Hungarians and smaller remnants, such as the Basque dwellers in the Pyrenees, lingering in out-of-the-way places.

Many of these have preserved the manners, customs and beliefs of a bygone day, and having reached a certain point, seem to have stood still while the rest of the world has moved onward. The history of mankind is made up of struggles between races in which the weaker have been stamped out or enslaved, but these people, whose forefathers

E