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Space Infinites Directory 05
Page 09
In Switzerland, one of the chief employments of the people is that of herdsmen and shepherds, and nearly the half of the surface of the country is occupied as mountain pastures and meadows. Here you see the woman tending the sheep and goats, and spinning industriously, while her husband is busy with some other part of the duties of tending the sheep. It is often painful to see how much the poor sheep and oxen suffer while being driven through the streets. It is pitiful to see them looking in vain for some place of rest and shelter. Little boys in towns sometimes like to HELP--as they call it--to drive cattle, but they generally increase the terror and confusion of the poor beasts, and little think of the pain they are causing. Sheep and goats are very useful to us; besides serving us for food, they supply our cloth and flannel clothes, blankets, and other warm coverings.
It is in France that we find the greatest wealth of relics of Cave-men. Sir John Lubbock has left us a description of the valley of the Vezere, where these caverns occur. The Vezere is a small tributary of the Dordogne. "The rivers of the Dordogne run in deep valleys cut through calcareous strata: and while the sides of the valley in chalk districts are generally sloping, in this case, owing probably to the hardness of the rock, they are frequently vertical. Small caves and grottoes frequently occur: besides which, as the different strata possess unequal power of resistance against atmospheric influence, the face of the rock is, as it were, scooped out in many places, and thus 'rockshelters' are produced. In very ancient times these caves and rock-shelters were inhabited by men, who have left behind them abundant evidence of their presence.
After the planting, First Man, First Woman, Wolf Chief, and Mountain Lion Chief each made a speech advising the creation of a number of mountains similar to the ones they had had in the lower world. This was agreeable to all, and accordingly the work was begun. The handfuls of earth caught up hurriedly from the tops of the mountains below as they were driven off by the rising flood were taken to the cardinal points and deposited in the same relative positions, an equal distance apart, as were the submerged mountains from which the earth had been taken. First Si{~COMBINING BREVE~}snajini, the White Mountain, was made in the east; then Tsotzilh, the Blue Mountain, in the south; next Dokooeslit, the Yellow Mountain, in the west, and lastly Depe{~COMBINING BREVE~}nsa, the Black Mountain, in the north. Having yet portions of each handful of earth remaining, two more mountains, called Choili and Tzilhnuhodihli, were made near the point of emergence in the middle of the rectangle formed by the creation of the other four. To give each mountain color, white shell, turquoise, abalone, and jet were used for those at the cardinal points, while the middle two were colored with a mixture of all these substances.
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