the hardships entailed on the poor were much more distressing. It is highly pleasing, however, to find a thread of philanthropy running a continuous course throughout the narrative of these inclement seasons. The nobility and gentry of eighty or a hundred years ago would seem to have vied with each other in acts of humanity towards the suffering poor. In hard times, nearly all the towns and hamlets of Scotland were recipients, in a greater or less degree, of good round sums, to be distributed among the needy, in coals, meal, or other necessaries to comfort and existence. But it must be kept in view that in those days the donors lived more at home than they do now; and in many respects, the two extremities of the social scale were more in sympathy with each other. ANCIENT EUROPEAN SAVAGES. IN TWO PARTS.-PART I. The discovery so far back as 1797 of flint implements associated with remains of fossil elephants, &c., in gravel beds at Hoxne, in Suffolk, raised at least a strong presumption that a race unknown to history had occupied the European area. Up to forty years ago, similar discoveries in limestone caverns, fissures, and rock shelters had strengthened this position greatly; but to those only who were capable of estimating the evidence at its true value, did it amount to conviction. The facts were repeatedly denied, though the remains were publicly exhibited in attestation; and the most absurd theories were formed to explain them away. The stone implements were 'thunderbolts;' the colossal bones were those of the giants of Scandinavian mythology; and so forth! But the comparative anatomists proved beyond question the animal ownership of the huge bones; and the so-called 'thunderbolts' proclaimed their origin as the work of man, by their exact likeness to the stone weapons manufactured by existing savages. The science of Prehistoric Archæology may then be said to have made a fair start. It was known what to look for, and in what places that which was sought was likely to be found. Many workers entered the field; and a mass of valuable and interesting data rapidly accumulated, from which it became possible to reproduce the substantial features of that rude and primitive life, and to picture the struggles of an ancient people to maintain themselves against ferocious animals with the most primitive weapons, in a climate almost arctic in severity. Nor very many years ago, it would have drawn a smile of contemptuous incredulity from people of education to have suggested even the possibility of a race of savages having once inhabited all continental Europe and Great Britain. Our earliest informant on the condition of the northern nations some sixty years before Christ was Cæsar, and he certainly describes no savages; though, in comparison with the advanced civilisation of Rome, they were no doubt, as he styled them, 'barbarians' in the sense which the word has acquired amongst us. They were acquainted with the use of metals, and had attained to a knowledge of the arts of life far superior to anything which we associate in our minds with the lower races. Moreover, before five centuries had elapsed, these same Although, in view of the large area to be barbarians had made great progress in the examined, a very small portion only of the destruction of that empire which vainly ex- earth's surface has been explored, the students pended its strength against them, and had of anthropology and archæology have arrived founded a new one, whose civilising power was at definite and well-founded conclusions with destined to become the most remarkable in the regard to the antiquity of man everywhere. In history of the world. They may have quaffed the neighbourhood of London, for instance, where the blood of the enemy from a cup made of a investigation has been prosecuted with the utmost human skull, and stained themselves blue with industry and persistence, numbers of flint imple'woad;' but their social organisation and laws-ments have been turned up from the gravels in the heritage of the race to this day-must have been the result of centuries of an intellectual growth nowhere approached by savages. Even when Cæsar hurled his armoured legions against men who fought almost naked, the latter could have taught the corrupt capital of that vast empire many a lesson in the domestic virtues and in moral conduct. Such were the inhabitants of Northern Europe at the moment when history first introduces them to us. The climate was substantially the same as that prevailing now, and the animals and vegetation have undergone little change since that time. In their traditions, there was no sign of any race anterior to themselves, nor of the strange animals and unfamiliar vegetation which we now know to have existed ages before, from the shores of the Arctic Ocean almost to the Mediterranean. various localities. Among these are many exam- Wherever the great centres of modern civilisation have been explored, the fact is revealed of the universal prevalence of a 'stone age' anterior to that of metal. The Pyramid builders little suspected that there lay, deep beneath the foundations of their cities, weapons fabricated by a people who raised neither monuments nor permanent dwellings. How astonished would have been the Homeric heroes, 'the mail-clad Argives,' in all their splendid panoply of war, could they have known what Dr Schliemann-digging there to unearth the far-famed city of Troy-discovered on the very spot where Greeks and Trojans met in that memorable struggle! Troy, itself founded on the ruins of a still more ancient city, is the product of modern times, in comparison with the unwritten history disclosed in the stone weapons which the great German archeologist dug up from beneath those blackened ruins. So far distant is Homer from our time, that we have no certain knowledge of him. Allow ing, however, that he wrote ten centuries before the Christian era, he nevertheless knew nothing of the men who fought with stone battle-axes ages prior to his well-armed Greeks, with their metal shields, their swords and spears, their engines of war. Who among the denizens of the cloud-capped towers' of Ilium could have pointed to even a faint tradition of that primitive people who once had occupied the very site where then stood the proud city? Not only in the Old but in the New World is there abundance of evidence, all pointing to the habitation of the earth by man at a period so remote that the oldest records of mankind engraven upon stone are silent about him. It was reserved for the penetrating intelligence of the nineteenth century to discover and interpret signs which had escaped the attention of all former generations. and Lartet and Dr Falconer into the contents of At intervals of some miles along the course of the Vézère are numerous caverns, at heights varying from eighty feet to a short distance above the present flood-mark of the river. All of them contain a dark soil, with fragments of fresh-water shells and plants, and other characteristics of river The most important relics have hitherto been mud, so that at one time the waters of the Vézère found in natural caverns in limestone rocks-a must have flowed into them during the autumn formation peculiarly liable to be excavated by and winter floods. We thus arrive at the conclurunning water. These occur in various parts sion, that the river has cut its way through the of the world, and owing to the shelter they valley of limestone rock to a depth of eighty afford, have often been selected as abodes by feet, since the highest of the caverns was inhabited man and animals. In a cold climate, the cavern by a race of human beings whose remains lie in is a ready-made house to which man would resort the earthy deposit. There are very distinct evifrom absolute necessity, if he had not attained dences of the occupation of this valley by people the art of building. Consequently, we find that in progressive stages of advancement, if we intermostly all the known European caves have been pret the facts correctly. Assuming, as the excainhabited from time to time down to a compara-vation of the valley seems to warrant, that the tively recent date. The Briton or Gaul fleeing from his Roman pursuer, and the proscribed Royalist hiding from Cromwell's relentless soldiers, has each in turn sought a caverned refuge; or the smuggler has stored away his brandy kegs where the cave-lion once made his lair. But little did these cave-seekers dream of the wonderful story that could be told by the brown earth beneath their feet, where lay entombed the bones and tools which belonged to a race who had seen elephants with enormous tusks browsing in English valleys, and the rhinoceros wallowing in the mud of the Thames; and whose ears must have been greeted by the roaring of the mighty sabretoothed lion. Whatever scepticism may have existed in the public mind with regard to the existence of man in prehistoric times, it was completely dispelled by the investigations, in 1865, of Messrs Christy highest of the caves represent tenancy by the earliest inhabitants, those nearer to the present river level will indicate the succession in time of their various occupants. In correspondence with this view, based on careful examination of all the circumstances, it is possible to divide the caverns into four groups, from highest level downwards: No. 1, Le Moustier; No. 2, Cromagnon; No. 3, Upper Laugerie and Gorge d'Enfer; No. 4, Lower Laugerie, Les Eyzies, and La Madeleine. In number one, we have only the rudest and most massive stone weapons, designed for the largest game. In number two, the weapons are better made, and there are light horn dart points, with which small quadrupeds and birds may have been killed. Further improvement is seen in number three, where the admirably proportioned flint arrow and lance points, and highly finished darts and needles manufactured from reindeer horn, betoken not only more skilful workmanship, but greater proficiency in the arts of life. In number four, the increasing preponderance of bone weapons over those formed of stone, the finely worked and barbed lance and harpoon points, indicate a race in whom intelligence had taken the place of mere force; and the struggle for existence had consequently become less severe. Only in the last two groups do we find any fish-bones. These are very numerous; they are exclusively those of the salmon, and large fish such as would be easily secured by the harpoon in a manner akin to leistering' in the present day. But the inhabitants of the fourth group have left us still more convincing proof of their superiority to their predecessors, in the figures of animals which they carved out of solid reindeer horn and mammoth ivory, or cut with their flint knives on portions of those materials. Besides other animals, there are the mammoth, reindeer, glutton, auroch, horse, ibex, fishes, &c.; and last, but by no means least, a sculptured bust of a woman has been found, and a picture of another standing beside a horse, cut in reindeer horn-probably amongst the oldest representations of the human form in existence. The bold and vigorous execution of these is such as to command our admiration. Keen observers of wild animals were these savage huntsmen; for see how accurately they have delineated the uncouth body, great carved tusks, and long mane of the mammoth, on a slab of ivory from his own tusk; just as we know the gigantic animal from the specimens, with the flesh still adherent, which have been washed out of their frozen tomb in Siberia. Not less faithfully have these huntsmen exhibited the graceful forms of four or five reindeer, seemingly engaged in mortal combat, cut neatly with a sharp flint point upon a slab of slate. All the figures are in profile, without the least attempt at perspective, exactly in the usual manner of savages of our own time, and like the tentative efforts of our own children. No doubt the carvings of mammoth and reindeer are more ambitious flights of genius, though they are far inferior in execution to the incised figures. This, however, might have been a consequence of the object for which they were designed, namely, to serve as dagger handles, the remainder of the horn being worked into a sharp polished point. Were there nothing in these caverns, besides these primitive works of art, to assure us of the coexistence of their inhabitants with the animals they figured, and with which, on their hunting excursions, they must have become thoroughly familiar, the evidence would have been conclusive enough; but here are also bones and teeth of those animals mingled with the charcoal and general refuse of many a feast. It would be impossible to enumerate within the limits of these papers all the articles of workmanship found in these ancient abodes of the mammoth hunters, indicative of their rude life and surroundings; but it would be scarcely chivalrous to omit some notice of the feminine members of the community, who even in those prehistoric times delighted in articles of personal adornment. Thus, the daughters of the chiefs arrayed themselves in necklaces made of animals' teeth, bored and strung upon sinews or strips of skin; and the art of tattooing, which in the nineteenth century is represented among our fair dames by the rouge-box and brush, was practised by the ladies of the Vézère. Those little pieces of red ochre, whereon the marks of the flint knife may still be seen, were doubtless scraped to form a paste, with which the beauties of that far-distant time tinged their cheeks and lips, in preparation for dance, banquet, or nuptial ceremony. The men naturally passed most of their time in the chase. That valuable animal the reindeerin all probability domesticated-furnished almost everything requisite for their comfort. Its skin became their clothing, secured with strips of hide or sinews, drawn through the material with needles made from splinters of bone, and drilled with a sharp flint point. The antlers of the deer were carefully cut into lengths, the 'snags' or points being worked into dart, arrow, and harpoon heads, fixed in cleft sticks and bound with sinews. The 'beam,' or thick, straight part of the horn, was turned to account in various ways. Pieces several inches in length are ornamented with figures of animals, and drilled, possibly for suspension round the neck; and these are believed to have been insignia of rank or bâtons of command. There is an interesting little relic, probably belonging to a chief, forming a whistle, a toe-bone of the reindeer perforated by a hole which goes to the middle of the bone; and upon this primitive instrument one can at this day reproduce the shrill sound with which the ancient huntsman was doubtless wont to call his followers to his side. The life of these later cave-dwellers was more refined than that of the Moustier savages, who employed only massive stone weapons, and supplied their feasts chiefly with the flesh of the horse. To their slovenly and uncleanly habits we owe our insight into their domestic arrangements. As the long bones of the animals were cracked for the purpose of extracting the marrow, they were thrown aside anywhere on the floor of the cave, among the dirt and ashes accumulated from their fireplaces; and thus weapons and implements became lost in the general refuse. Among people who dwelt in a fertile valleyits fertility being indicated by the abundance of herbivorous game-we should expect at least some rude knowledge of agriculture; but there are neither mortars for pounding grain-with one extremely doubtful exception-nor any implement which could be used in tilling the earth. They were equally ignorant of the art of making pottery or of spinning; and their stone weapons remained unpolished, just as they were hewn out of the parent material. The actual human remains consist of some half-dozen individuals of different ages, whose bones represent a well-developed race, strong and tall, not at all inferior in anatomical character to good examples of existing savages. One female skull has over the forehead a terrible fracture, clean cut with a massive stone axe, which must have penetrated deep into the brain. What ages have elapsed since that cowardly slaughter of a woman took place! Though the mammoth had passed utterly out of existence before the dawn of history, there 町 Journal of men, who must rank as savages, dwelt in the valley throughout the whole period embraced by this great change in its physical formation, and while the animal life of the country differed totally from that which prevailed in even the earliest historical times. In any attempt we may make to estimate the lapse of time between the occupation of the Moustier and Madeleine caverns, we are restricted to the physical data alone; for the life of man was passed in that valley during a geological age with animals which are now extinct. Whatever period may be assigned to the action of the river while excavating the valley to so great a depth, from the Moustier to the Madeleine, as to leave even the latter beyond the reach of floods, it must be a matter of speculation resting on the rate of wear and tear suffered by the limestone rock, of which we possess no actual measure. Many geologists would consider a quarter of an inch annually an extravagantly large estimate of denudation; which, however, if we accepted it, would give the Moustier people an antiquity of more than three thousand eight hundred years. Be this as it may, our conception of the lapse of time may be brought to a closer comparison with human chronology in the case of the most recent cave, the Madeleine. The mammoth, as we have seen, was still a common animal in the south of France, together with the reindeer, when man dwelt in that cavern. Since this last of the series of caves was inhabited, the river has cut its channel only a few feet deeper, and those few feet evidently represent the time which is covered by authentic history; for we find no mention of the mammoth in any chronology, however far-reaching it may The writer who draws inaccurate pictures claim to be, though that remarkable animal was of ship-life, so long as he provides plenty of widely distributed over Europe and Asia; and highly coloured adventures, seems to enjoy a the presumption amounts to a certainty that it strange immunity from adverse criticism, and became extinct in Southern Europe long before it is left to indulge unchallenged in the wildest disappeared from Northern Asia. Yet not the vagaries of his imagination; indeed, the more faintest trace of it appears in mythology or exaggerated and fanciful his romances, the better tradition, where, assuredly, its memory would they appear to be received. Fallacies and onehave been preserved, had not an immense inter-sided statements may be largely dealt in; the val separated the mammoth period from the utmost confines of that epoch when man began to record events. The earliest history of Southern Europe is, in fact, inscribed upon those pieces of ivory, slate, and horn, by a race of savages who erected no monuments, built no houses, and had not even the most primitive conception of written language. In the era of the Madeleine cave-dwellers, the mammoth was still plentiful; the reindeer and glutton had not retreated to the Arctic regions; man had not learned to polish his stone weapons, and was ignorant of the art of making the roughest pottery. CONCERNING SEA STORIES FOR AN innate love of adventure and enterprise is We may be unable to count the passage of time by centuries; but those few feet of excavating work done by the river since it last flooded the cave, present a chronological record in which the extinction of the mammoth would be by no means the earliest event. But from this cave, 80 comparatively recently invaded by the river, we must look up to the Moustier, so far above it, and endeavour to realise the vast interval of time represented by the gradual erosion of that limestone rock by the Vézère to a depth of eighty feet, subsequent to the last deposit of river-mud upon the human and animal relics which it contained. Whatever duration we may assign to this, it is beyond question that a race betrayal of ignorance, which results from the blundering use of technicalities and manifest inability to reproduce the sailor's manners of speech and modes of thought, is unnoticed in the extravagance of the narrative in which it occurs. In fact, a great deal of what passes for sound and pure literature, proves, when judged impartially, to be little better than pure trash. The absurd practice, for instance, which prevails of crowding more surprising episodes into a single chapter than fall to the lot of a real sailor in a lifetime, is far from satisfactory, and decidedly reprehensible. The works which emanate from the worthiest sources often offend most in this respect, the best work being naturally expected from the most valued writer; as a rule, however, the more he is esteemed, the more an author strives to fill his books with revolting scenes and bloodthirsty rencounters, the morbid character of which cannot be sufficiently decried; and their inventor, by overstepping the wide bounds accorded to writers of his class, is really entitled to no higher reputation than that of a successful adventure-monger. The position occupied by story-writers, as recognised caterers for the young, is one of great responsibility, and the utmost care should be exercised in avoiding its abuse and in discharging faithfully the trust pertaining to it. A reform in our juvenile literature is urgently needed. In place of a style so ultra-romantic as that which prevails, we want one pure, rational, and instructive. As at present, many writers engage to describe the sailor's life who are in no way fitted for the task, and whose experience has never been gained but in the unoperative capacity of passenger or amateur. The entertaining works of such practical men as Marryat and Chamier, though far from being faithful representations of life aboard ship, are at least free from absolute misrepresentation, and are not characterised by the free-and-easy treatment the subject receives at the hands of our present authors. The injurious and unhealthy effect of many of our story-books upon the youthful mind is unquestionable. The deluded youngster with his head full of adventure and sight-seeing in foreign lands, invariably thinks of becoming a sailor. He longs to partake in the deeds of daring of which he reads such glowing accounts; to enjoy life on the 'free, open sea,' where boys are taught to splice, stow sails, mount rigging, listen to yarns, and have a good time generally! But when once actively employed, he soon begins to marvel at the eagerness with which he voluntarily exchanged the comforts of the shore for the miseries of the restless deep. In place of the freedom' he seeks, he but too frequently finds a sailor's the most monotonous life imaginable; his only change being the romance to be got out of severe and not unfrequently dangerous labour. It will be interesting to touch upon some of the chief points regarding which erroneous notions prevail, and which uninstructed book-makers are sedulous in propagating. A popular idea-derived perhaps from seeing sailors when paid off-is that Jack is allowed to take his pleasure ashore, much as he pleases. In reality, he often makes long voyages, and remains, sometimes for weeks, in foreign ports, getting no nearer than a mile or two from the land. The pleasures of the shore are forbidden him, and he must content himself with a distant view of what he has travelled so far to reach. I have known a sailor who had been for two months at Pensacola, Florida, during which time his foot never went over the ship's side. This is no extraordinary case. Boys sometimes get ashore for an hour in the boats, but are expected to stay at the landing-place. If a lad asks leave of an officer, he will probably be told that 'boys come to sea to work, not to go galavanting ashore.' Liberty for a short time is occasionally granted at the end of a long passage; but this is usually spent in drinking-shops of the worst description, or in other debaucheries, for the beauties of nature soon fail to charm one in whose breast toil and hardship leave little room for sentiment. This is Jack's reward for the romance which renders his lot a delightful one.' As a matter of fact, his life is very uneventful; his hardships severe and prosaic; his pleasures few and depraved. The dirty, menial jobs to which sailors are put would disgust many who study the clean, ideal tars of the story-books, in which their privations and degradations are glossed over. A few facts may illustrate this. In the first place, sailors wash themselves at comparatively rare intervals, and occasionally three or more in the same water. As a boy, I have myself stood abaft the windlass, hauling back the chain-cable when thickly plastered with mud and filth; I have balanced myself on the combings of a hatchway, and pushed off baskets of coal as they were hoisted from the hold, being well smothered in dust the while; I have groped about in a dirty lazarette amongst greasy paraffin cans and paint-pots; I have been roused from my warm berth in the middle of the night, after a hard day's toil, to face rain, wind, and cold. Of course, it may be very romantic to fumble one's way aloft, wet through, and with hands devoid of feeling; or the calls of duty may lead to the cheerful compliance of the sailor as he bends by the hour over an evil-smelling grease-pot beneath the glare of a tropical sun, or stands about decks encased in stiff and claminy oilskins, picking oakum; though to some people such might rather be suggestive of the discipline to which convicts are subjected. As to sailors' food, one could wish that those who in their writings systematically ignore the subject, had to acquire a sense of its importance by prac tical experience; for this would do much to convince them of their profound ignorance as to the realities of the hard lot they so complacently extol. The gaudy frippery a sailor wears in pictures naturally takes a boy's eye. A good seaman, however, needs no ornaments to recommend him; he can maintain his reputation equally well in a red shirt or a tarry frock. an Dana, in his Two Years before the Mast, gives a graphic account of his own experiences. He says that no one, however great his ability as amateur, can have any idea of the drudgery of a nautical life unless he has sailed before the mast and experienced it all himself—a remark in which intelligent men invariably concur. Whatever romance the sea may possess is not to be enhanced by the effusions of outsiders-the best of whom fail in depicting its realities. There are sailors and sailors, and men of worth and probity are to be met with afloat; but the general effect of many others of their class cannot be considered as altogether conducive to the interests of virtue or morality. In placing a boy aboard ship, a serious consideration should be that to do so is to subject him to an ordeal such as most people would shrink from ashore. The pernicious habits a youth acquires at sea will often act to his serious detriment through life, impairing his moral character to a deplorable extent. He moreover has to contend with these evil influences at a time when he is least able to do so, and when his mind is particularly susceptible to impressions ; and he soon finds himself indulging in what he was formerly accustomed to regard with horror. Practically, the inducements offered are not such as would be likely to incline the prudent to select 'the sea' for a profession, the possible advantages to be gained compensating but inadequately for the years of labour and privation needed for their attainment. The supply of good hands of all ranks in the merchant service generally far exceeds the demand; so much so, that experienced and qualified officers find great difficulty in obtaining berths, and are often to be met with serving in subordinate capacities aboard ship. For a lad of moderate ability, with no prospects and but little |