people in all the lands. Now we grow fewer and fewer. Evil and
sickness have come upon men. See how I, who tell this story, drag my
life along, unable to stand upon my feet.

The two men who were setting out had each newly taken a wife, and had
as yet no children. They made themselves cups of musk-ox horn, each
making a cup for himself from one side of the same beast's head. And
they set out, each going away from the other, that they might go by
different ways and meet again some day. They travelled with sledges,
and chose land to stay and live upon each summer.

It took them a long time to get round the world; they had children,
and they grew old, and then their children also grew old, until
at last the parents were so old that they could not walk, but the
children led them.

And at last one day, they met--and of their drinking horns there was
but the handle left, so many times had they drunk water by the way,
scraping the horn against the ground as they filled them.

"The world is great indeed," they said when they met.

They had been young at their starting, and now they were old men,
led by their children.

Truly the world is great.

THE COMING OF MEN, A LONG, LONG WHILE AGO

Our forefathers have told us much of the coming of earth, and of
men, and it was a long, long while ago. Those who lived long before
our day, they did not know how to store their words in little black
marks, as you do; they could only tell stories. And they told of many
things, and therefore we are not without knowledge of these things,
which we have heard told many and many a time, since we were little
children. Old women do not waste their words idly, and we believe
what they say. Old age does not lie.

A long, long time ago, when the earth was to be made, it fell down
from the sky. Earth, hills and stones, all fell down from the sky,
and thus the earth was made.

And then, when the earth was made, came men.

It is said that they came forth out of the earth. Little children
came out of the earth. They came forth from among the willow bushes,
all covered with willow leaves. And there they lay among the little
bushes: lay and kicked, for they could not even crawl. And they got
their food from the earth.

Then there is something about a man and a woman, but what of them? It
is not clearly known. When did they find each other, and when had they
grown up? I do not know. But the woman sewed, and made children's
clothes,