There was prospect that he would be
engaged in running away from something or running after something during
most of his life. Times were not dull for humanity in the age of stone.
The children had no lack of things to interest, if not always to amuse,
them, and neither had the men and women. And this is the truthful story
of the boy Ab and his playmates and of what happened when he grew to be a
man.
It is well to speak here of the river. The stream has been already
mentioned as flowing to the eastward. It did not flow in that direction
regularly; its course was twisted and diverted, and there were bays and
inlets and rapids between precipices, and islands and wooded peninsulas,
and then the river merged into a lake of miles in extent, the waters
converging into the river again. So it was that the banks in one place
might form a height and in another merge evenly into a densely wooded
forest or a wide plain. It was so, too, that these conditions might exist
opposite each other. Thus the woodland might face the plain, or the
precipice some vast extending marsh.
To speak further of this river it may be mentioned, incidentally, that
to-day its upper reaches still exist and that the relatively small stream
remaining is called the Thames. Beside and across it lies the greatest
city in the world and its mouth is upon what is called the English
Channel.
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