Following this period came a time of intense cold, but the conditions were
not so severe as during the Great Glacial times.

[Illustration: Canine tooth or tusk of a Kirkdale bear (Ursus spelacus)]



CHAPTER III

_The Vale of Pickering in the Lesser Ice Age_


Long before even the earliest players took up their parts in the great
Drama of Human Life which has been progressing for so long in this portion
of England, great changes came about in the aspect of the stage. These
transformations date from the period of Arctic cold, which caused ice of
enormous thickness to form over the whole of north-western Europe.

Throughout this momentous age in the history of Yorkshire, as far as we
can tell, the flaming sunsets that dyed the ice and snow with crimson were
reflected in no human eyes. In those far-off times, when the sun was
younger and his majesty more imposing than at the present day, we may
imagine a herd of reindeer or a solitary bear standing upon some
ice-covered height and staring wonderingly at the blood-red globe as it
neared the horizon. The tremendous silence that brooded over the face of
the land was seldom broken save by the roar of the torrents, the
reverberating boom of splitting ice, or the whistling and shrieking of the
wind.

The evidences in favour of this glacial period are too apparent to allow