hives of seekers after more land and new fortunes? In the second place,
the oldest races of the world left abundant traces by which we can
determine not only the places of their settlements, but their mode of
life and the degree of culture they successively reached.

There has certainly been a time when men did not know enough to build
dwellings for themselves--or, not to be unfair, had not the necessary
tools--but lived in the forests which then very nearly covered the
globe, using such natural shelter as they found ready for them, almost
like the savage animals which it was their main business to fight and
kill in self-defence and also for food and clothing. Caverns in steep
mountain-sides must have been their most luxurious, because safest and
best-protected, retreats. Many dozens of such caverns are known in all
parts of the world, and the tale they tell is not difficult to read.
Several have become very famous, from the wealth of finds with which
they rewarded the searchers. Some appear to have been used as
burying-places, for the ground in them is covered to a great depth with
broken-up human skulls and skeletons, while outside, on the rocky ledges
or platforms before the mouth of the cavern, are found the traces of
large fires, built again and again on the same spot--ashes, and cinders,
and charred bones of animals; also broken marrow-bones, horns, hoofs,
and other remains of plentiful meals, showing that then already it was
the custom to feast at funerals.

Other caverns have as certainly been used as dwellings. Hence the name
of "cave-dwellers," which has been given to those otherwise unknown
races. How very crude and primitive their mode of life is shown by the
vast quantities of tools and weapons in hard flint--generally
broken--which are found intermixed with the other remains. They are very
simple: heads of spears, blades of knives and scrapers, some indented