DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: A Talk about Cattle and Crops

WHEN the chapter was finished, the boys talked about the plan for making a dug-out hut, if they could all be together in the next winter holidays. Uncle John said he would not stop them, but he thought they would find it too hard a task when they came to dig down into the ground, unless they could find a place where the soil was deep and sandy.

Dick wanted to know what tools the people of the old time used when they dug out their winter huts.

Uncle John took down another book, and showed them a picture of an old pick-axe made out of a deer’s antler. But, he said, he did not know what the men used to do for shovels; perhaps they scooped up the soil in their hands, and carried it up to the top of the pit in baskets.

Anyway the boys thought that with their spades they would be able to dig down fairly deep; and then, if they were to lay the soil around the top as they dug it out, they would make the walls higher.

Joe said it would be great fun to have a real fire and collect acorns and roast them to see how they tasted. But Uncle John said they would not find many acorns in the Christmas holidays: the rooks and the squirrels would have taken care of that. But David said they could have some chestnuts from home and pretend they were acorns. He said he thought they would be nicer to eat than acorns, anyway. “Acorns are so bitter,” said he, “I wonder anyone could eat them at all.”

“Yes,” said Uncle John. “But if they were pounded up and put into a vessel with water, the water would take out much of the bitter taste; and then the water could be poured off and the acorn meal dried and mixed with corn meal, as we read, for either corn-cakes or porridge.”

Then David asked why the people didn’t keep larger herds of cattle, so that in the long winter, when there was no other food, they could be sure of having beef in plenty.

“Well,” said Uncle John, “now that’s a question—who can think of an answer?”

Dick said that wolves would come and kill the cattle; and Joe said that enemies would come and steal them.

“Those are both likely answers,” said Uncle John, “for, of course, it is harder to guard a large herd than a small one—but, can’t some one think of a better?”

David said he expected it was hard to keep cattle in the winter, if the people had no byres for them, and no hay to feed them with.

“That is a good notion,” said Uncle John, “the people couldn’t take a cow down the passage into a pit-hut, though no doubt they built cowsheds of some sort inside the wall of the village. But cows can’t live on nothing but fresh air, any more than human beings can; and it must have been a difficult matter to collect winter forage for even a small herd in days when nobody made hay. And then, I daresay, it was not easy to rear large herds, for the cattle which the people had were only partly tamed; and some would be apt to stray away into the forests; and the more a man had, the more he would lose, both in this way and from the attacks of wild animals, as Dick says.

“It is more likely that most men had only a few cattle at first. Then they naturally tried to keep for use and for breeding those that were the tamest and the best; and you may be sure that a man would not kill a cow that was gentle and gave good milk, unless he were driven by starvation.

“But, of course, as time went on, men became more skilful in rearing cattle and sheep, just as they became more skilful in growing corn. And so it came to pass that people had always food at home, without needing to hunt the wild deer, except for amusement; but that was not for a very long while after the time we have been reading about.”

Then Dick wanted to know about the corn that Crubach sowed. Where did it come from? Was it wild corn? Uncle John said that was a hard question, and one that even learned men had never been able to answer completely. There is no wild corn in this country, he said, and the original stock of the corn that Crubach and his neighbours had must have been brought from some other country a great many years before Crubach lived.

“What are pig-nuts like?” Dick asked.

“You dig them up in fields, with an old knife,” said Joe, “a white flower grows up from them, earlier in the summer than this. They don’t have a shell; they are like little potatoes, and taste like a nut but are rather tough.”

“Yes,” said Uncle John, “I don’t suppose the people thought much of pig-nuts, which probably were not very plentiful in times when there were fewer meadows; and not easy to get, besides being rather poor things when you get them, as Joe says. But the wild fruit that they gathered in the autumn—we have read of acorns, nuts and blackberries—what other kinds can you think of?”

“Wild strawberries,” said Dick.

“And raspberries,” said Joe.

“Cranberries,” said David, “and blaeberries.”

“What are they?” Dick asked.

“You say bilberries, or perhaps ‘whorts’—go on.”

“Hips and haws.”

“Very likely.”

“Rowanberries?” David asked.

“Yes, very likely: but think of something else—not berries at all.”

“Not crab apples?” said Joe, “they didn’t eat crabs surely?”

“I expect they did. Not that we need guess about it, for to a certain extent we know. A good many years ago, the remains of several villages of about the period of this story were found beside the shores of some of the lakes in Switzerland. There was hardly anything of the huts to be seen, because they had been burned down. But the fire which had destroyed the huts had preserved some of the things inside. For instance, jars were dug out of the silt containing what had once been food, all charred by the fire but whole and perfect in shape. There were nuts and acorns and corn of different kinds, but also crabs or wild apples that had evidently been split and dried. Some of these things are in the British Museum now; and if we could go and see them, I daresay you would think them very interesting.”