Читать книгу From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age онлайн

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“See, beloved, how the mighty fall at the word of Simlee and the stroke of Shoozoo!”

Simlee leaped from the tree with glee, and taking up the snake, called to the other girls who were sitting among the branches or lying about the mounds, to witness her good fortune.

“That’s the same snake,” replied one, “that was brought here two days ago by Kibboo, and thrown away this morning because it had begun to smell.”

At this Simlee grew angry, and flew at the girl with open jaws, tearing her hair and beating her face; and there would have been as hot a fight between the women as between the men and the snakes, but for the return of the warriors with their trophies, when the curiosity of the female apes, which was greater than their anger, put an end to the quarrel, and they all ran to possess themselves of the snakes for ornaments.

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We have said that the stories of the exploits of this war have been handed down in the religion of the Apes. This is due not so much to the achievements of the heroes as to the accounts of them by Shoozoo, who was much more active in relating battles than in fighting them; so that, as the heroes of the Trojan War owe more to Homer than to their own prowess, (for many great men lived before Agamemnon, whose exploits are forgotten for want of an imaginative historian); so the heroes of the fight about Cocoanut Hill are chiefly indebted to the Homer of the Apes for his reports of them. As gods, demi-gods, heroes and fair women rose from a ten days’ skirmish on the banks of the Scamander, so divinities, good and bad, had their origin in the Cocoanut Hill battles by reason of a good telling. Shoozoo was, fortunately, unlike Homer, both warrior and historian, and so, like Xenophon and Cæsar, made himself the chief character in his accounts. The other apes nearly all drop out of history, and their deeds are ascribed to him, who at the time of this story, was deemed the chief character in that conflict; showing that for future fame a good liar is better than a good fighter.