But round Tig’s home there was less danger, because the wild beasts had learned to fear men and their weapons and their fires. But still, wolves and bears were seen sometimes close to the village; so the children were safer playing up in the trees than on the ground; and they all learned to be very good climbers.
From the boys with whom he played, when he grew older, Tig learned many other useful things. He learned to swing himself down from one branch of a tree to a lower branch, and catch hold with his feet; to dive without splashing, and swim under water right across to the opposite bank of the river; to save his breath when running, so as to last out on a long race. He and the other boys practised shooting with bows and arrows, which their fathers helped them to make. And they had stone-throwing matches, too; and no one was considered to be any good unless he could throw hard and straight with both hands. Tig and his friends all longed to become hunters, and their favourite game was to play at hunting; and as they grew older, they used to go out in parties into the woods to hunt and fish. But they did not often bring home any game.
_DICK AND HIS FRIENDS: The Hut that the Boys built_
AS soon as Uncle John had finished reading, he asked the boys if any of them could guess why Tig’s father’s winter hut was partly dug out of the ground.
Dick thought because of wild beasts; and Joe said: “Because it would be warmer underground.”
Uncle John said that those were very good reasons, but he thought the chief reason was that in those early times people could not build walls. They had no tools such as masons and carpenters have nowadays. They had no iron to make pickaxes and saws and planes with; they had only stone axes that were not much use for splitting or shaping beams. And so they had to live in houses not much better than foxes’ dens or rabbit-burrows.
They went to the heath next day, and looked at the pits again. Dick and Joe were talking about the pit-dwellings. Dick said they must have been very damp places to live in; but Joe said no--rabbits and foxes and badgers live in burrows underground, and their fur is always dry. They asked Uncle John’s opinion. He said that he thought in very wet weather the huts would be damp, because the rain would soak in through the roof. But as the village was on the top of the hill, no water would lie about the ground; and, anyway, the men probably dug trenches to carry off the water down the hill.