of the
human voice gave a dramatic value to the hitherto primitive
sign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, the
Neolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would
necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer
would fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, but
an idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "_of two
hands and one foot's worth_" would be used, just as to-day an African
would express the same problem in a number of cows, and as the
comparatively modern Roman used such pictorial phrases as "_to condemn
a person of his head_." From this era, centuries before the Celt
traversed our shores, "the progress of civilisation" has gone on in one
unbroken continuity from the Second Stone Age man to the present time.

CHAPTER II.

"O dea, si prima repetens ab origine pergam et vacet annales
nostrorum audire laborum. Ante diem clauso componat Vesper
Olympo."--VERGIL, _AEneid_, Book I. 372.

"O goddess, if I were to proceed retracing them from their first
origin, and thou hadst leisure to hear the records of our labours
before (the end), the Evening Star would lull the day to rest,
Olympus being closed."

However, granting the scientific imagination to assume a starting-point
when the vast Ice Period was vanishing and language was not the test of
race, but of social contact, it must be allowed that the River Drift-man
was the first of his species that touched our shores, followed by the
Cave-dwellers some thousands of years later; the latter man having his
abode fixed to a locality, and his wanderings within prescribed limits.

He may have, this prehistoric man, this Cave-dweller, chattered like a
monkey in a patois understood only by his own family; but what is more
reasonable to suppose than that the Drift-men of the marshes and
coastlines had only a restricted use for vocal sounds, sign-language
being expressive enough to meet their few wants? Meagre social
conditions, peculiar isolation, savagery, strife for life, call for no
complex language, but sign-language has the authority of people living
on the globe to-day, not only amongst uncivilised races, but traces are
seen in our very midst.

The few examples of custom and signs given below will better illustrate
the force of the statement.

"Amongst the Uvinza, when two grandees meet, the junior leans forward,
bends his knees, a