could not possibly be fulfilled with implements of stone. To fell a
tree with a flint hatchet would occupy the labour of a month, and to
clear a small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require
the combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could
not be erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity,
security, culture, and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were
all but impossible. Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a
house is immense on human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man
in a cave or a camp--a nomad--dies with no more estate than the wolf
or the horse leaves. But so simple a labour as a house being
achieved, his chief enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the
teeth of wild animals, from frost, sunstroke, and weather; and fine
faculties begin to yield their fine harvest. Inventions and arts are
born, manners, and social beauty and delight." But to build a house
which should serve for shelter, for safety, and for comfort--in a
word, as a home for the family, which is the nucleus of
society--better tools than those of stone were absolutely
indispensable.

Hence most of the early European tribes were nomadic: first hunters,
wandering about from place to place like the American Indians, after
the game; then shepherds, following the herds of animals which they
had learnt to tame, from one grazing-ground to another, living upon
their milk and flesh, and clothing themselves in their skins held
together by leathern thongs. It was only when implements of metal had
been invented that it was possible to practise the art of agriculture
with any considerable success. Then tribes would cease from their
wanderings, and begin to form settlements, homesteads, villages, and
towns. An old Scandinavian legend thus curiously illustrates this
last period: -- There was a giantess whose daughter one day saw a