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Searchology Directory 13
Page 05
Having glanced at method and sources, I pass on to results. Some text-book must be consulted for the long list of pre-historic periods required for western Europe, not to mention the further complications caused by bringing in the remaining portions of the world. The stone-age, with its three great divisions, the eolithic (_eos_, Greek for dawn, and _lithos_, stone) the palaeolithic (_pallaeos_, old), and the neolithic (_neos_, new), and their numerous subdivisions, comes first; then the age of copper and bronze; and then the early iron-age, which is about the limit of proto-history. Here I shall confine my remarks to Europe. I am not going far afield into such questions as: Who were the mound-builders of North America? And are the Calaveras skull and other remains found in the gold-bearing gravels of California to be reckoned amongst the earliest traces of man in the globe? Nor, again, must I pause to speculate whether the dark-stained lustrous flint implements discovered by Mr. Henry Balfour at a high level below the Victoria Falls, and possibly deposited there by the river Zambezi before it had carved the present gorge in the solid basalt, prove that likewise in South Africa man was alive and busy untold thousands of years ago. Also, I shall here confine myself to the stone-age, because my object is chiefly to illustrate the long pedigree of the species from which we are all sprung.
The Connecticut Valley was next the theatre of war. Springfield, Hatfield, Deerfield, and Northfield were attacked the last two having to be abandoned. At Hadley the onset occurred on a fast-day. The men rushed from their worship with their muskets, which were ready to hand in church, and hastily formed for battle. Bewildered by the unexpected assault, they were on the point of yielding, when, according to tradition, an aged hero with long beard and queer clothing appeared, placed himself at their head and directed their movements. His evident acquaintance with fighting restored order and courage. The savages were driven pell-mell out of town, but the pursuers looked in vain for their deliverer. If the account is correct, it was the regicide, General Goffe, who had been a secret guest in the house of the Rev. Mr. Russell. He could not in such danger refrain from engaging once again, as he had so often done during the Civil War in England, in the defence of God's people.
In Italy (B.C. 212) the two Consuls Appius Claudius and Q. Fulvius began to draw together their forces for the purpose of besieging Capua. Hannibal advanced to relieve it, and compelled the Consuls to withdraw; but he was unable to force either of them to fight. Shortly afterward he returned again to the south to urge on the siege of the citadel of Tarentum, which still held out; and he spent the winter and the whole of the ensuing spring (B.C. 211) in its immediate neighborhood. But during his absence the Consuls had renewed the siege of Capua, and prosecuted it with such activity, that they had succeeded in surrounding the city with a double line of intrenchments. The pressing danger once more summoned Hannibal to its relief. He accordingly presented himself before the Roman camp, and attacked their lines from without, while the garrison co-operated with him by a vigorous sally from the walls.
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