Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/67

 Rh fruits and seeds were the ordinary food of the people. There is evidence of this from the rudest types of man.

Immediately in the neighbourhood of the Turees are a savage set of beings termed Nahals, who exist perfectly wild among the mountains, subsisting chiefly on roots, fruits, and berries; marriage contracts, as well as all other religious ceremonies, are entirely dispensed with, and the assorted pair are free to live together whilst they choose, or separate at pleasure and convenience; the infant accompanies its mother to her next abode, but the grown-up children remain with the father. The Nahals are dark and diminutive in stature,and their features are exceedingly ill-favoured. A few of this tribe cultivate a little grain among the ashes of the burnt boughs of the forest.

Wild rice, or Folle avoinie of the voyagers and traders, grows abundantly in the district between Lakes Superior and Winnipeg. In favourable seasons it affords sustenance to a populous tribe of Indians. In harvest-time the natives row their canoes among the grass, and bending its ears over the gunwale, thresh out the grain, which separates readily.

The Australian aborigines derived their subsistence from the spontaneous produce of the country. The soil was not cultivated, but a kind of grain was collected and prepared for food by pounding with stones.

I will not multiply evidence, but I draw attention to the fact that this evidence of the means of subsistence of man being derived from agricultural produce comes from the most backward races of the world. So that, from this stage up to the stage when ancestor-worship, and therefore tribal society, had become fully developed, we have the suggestion of a continued succession of agricultural people without the intervention of a hunting or pastoral stage.