Ugh-Lomi and the Cave Bear by H.G. Wells — Read

In the days when Eudena and Ugh-lomi fled from the people of Uya

towards the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet chestnutand the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the tribe, a full day's journey down the river, and up the mountains there were none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that ancient time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after generation, from one squatting-place to another, from the south-westward. And the animals that held the the hippopotami and rhinoceri of the river valleys, the horses of the grass plains, the deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in the branches, the the uplands, feared him but little--let alone the mammoths in the mountains and the elephants that came through the land in the summer- time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but the rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all his weapons against hoof and horn, tooth and claw?