Instantly all was confusion.  The infant, his mother and the other non-combatants of the tribe, were bundled into canoes and paddled, through a tempestuous sea, to the site of the modern Bordighiera.  The men who were not with the canoes fled into the depths of the Gorge Saint Louis, which now severs France from Italy.  The hill tribe came down at the double, and in a twinkling had “made hay” (to borrow a modern agricultural expression) of all the personal property of the cave dwellers.  They tore the nets (the use of which they did not understand), they broke the shell razors, they pouched the opulent store of flint arrowheads and bone daggers, and they tortured to death the pigs, which the cave people had just begun to try to domesticate.  After performing these rites, which were perfectly legal—­indeed, it would have been gross rudeness to neglect them—­the hill people withdrew to their wind-swept home on the Tete du Chien.

Philosophers who believe in the force of early impressions will be tempted to maintain that Why-Why’s invincible hatred of established institutions may be traced to these hours of discomfort in which his life began.

The very earliest years of Why-Why, unlike those of Mr. John Stuart Mill, whom in many respects he resembled, were not distinguished by proofs of extraordinary intelligence.  He rather promptly, however, showed signs of a sceptical character.  Like other sharp children, Why-Why was always asking metaphysical conundrums.  Who made men?  Who made the sun?  Why has the cave-bear such a hoarse voice?  Why don’t lobsters grow on trees?—­he would incessantly demand.  In answer to these and similar questions, the mother of Why-Why would tell him stories out of the simple mythology of the tribe.  There was quite a store of traditional replies to inquisitive children, replies sanctioned by antiquity and by the authority of the medicine-men, and in this lore Why-Why’s mother was deeply versed.

Thus, for example, Why-Why would ask his mother who made men.  She would reply that long ago Pund-jel, the first man, made two images of human beings in clay, and stuck on curly bark for hair.  He then danced a corroboree round them, and sang a song.  They rose up, and appeared as full-grown men.  To this statement, hallowed by immemorial belief, Why-Why only answered by asking who made Pund-jel.  His mother said that Pund-jel came out of a plot of reeds and rushes.  Why-Why was silent, but thought in his heart that the whole theory was “bosh-bosh,” to use the early reduplicative language of these remote times.  Nor could he conceal his doubts about the Deluge and the frog who once drowned all the world.  Here is the story of the frog:—­“Once, long ago, there was a big frog.  He drank himself full of water.  He could not get rid of the water.  Once he saw a sand-eel dancing on his tail by the sea-shore.  It made him laugh so that he burst, and all the water ran out.  There was a great