That cave was once inhabited by the nameless artist
himself, his wife, and family. It had been previously tenanted by
various other early families, as well as by bears, who seem to have
lived there in the intervals between the different human occupiers.
Probably the bears ejected the men, and the men in turn ejected the
bears, by the summary process of eating one another up. In any case the
freehold of the cave was at last settled upon our early French artist.
But the date of his occupancy is by no means recent; for since he lived
there the long cold spell known as the Great Ice Age, or Glacial Epoch,
has swept over the whole of Northern Europe, and swept before it the
shivering descendants of my poor prehistoric old master. Now, how long
ago was the Great Ice Age? As a rule, if you ask a geologist for a
definite date, you will find him very chary of giving you a distinct
answer. He knows that the chalk is older than the London clay, and the
oolite than the chalk, and the red marl than the oolite; and he knows
also that each of them took a very long time indeed to lay down, but
exactly how long he has no notion. If you say to him, 'Is it a million
years since the chalk was deposited?' he will answer, like the old lady
of Prague, whose ideas were excessively vague, 'Perhaps.' If you suggest
five millions, he will answer oracularly once more, 'Perhaps'; and if
you go on to twenty millions, 'Perhaps,' with a broad smile, is still
the only confession of faith that torture will wring out of him.
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