The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [56]
Silver trout flashed through the white spray of the riotous stream, tickled out of the water by hand with infinite patience as the unwary fish rested under overhanging roots and rocks. Giant sturgeon and salmon, often filled with a bonus of fresh black caviar or bright pink roe, hovered near the stream’s mouth, while monstrous catfish and black cod swept the bottom of the inland sea. Seine nets, made from the long hair of animals, hand-twisted into cord, strained the large fish from the water as they darted away from waders herding them toward the barrier of knotted strands. They often hiked the ten easy miles to the seacoast and soon had a supply of salty fish dried over smoky fires stored away. Molluscs and crustaceans were collected for ladles, spoons, bowls, and cups, as well as for their succulent morsels. Craggy cliffs were scaled to collect eggs from the multitude of seabirds nesting on the rocky promontories facing the water, and an occasional well-aimed stone brought an added treat of gannet, gull, or great auk.
Roots, fleshy stems, and leaves, squashes, legumes, berries, fruits, nuts, and grains were each collected in their season as the summer ripened. Leaves and flowers and herbs were dried for teas and flavorings, and sandy chunks of salt, left high and dry when the great northern glacier robbed moisture and caused coastlines to recede, were carried back to the cave to season winter fare.
The hunters went out often. The nearby steppes, rich in grasses and herbs and bereft of all but an occasional stand of stunted trees, abounded in herds of grazing animals. Giant deer ranged the grassy plains, their huge palmate antlers spreading as much as eleven feet in the larger animals, along with oversize bison with horn spreads of similar dimensions. Steppe horses seldom traveled so far south, but asses and onagers—the half-ass intermediate between horses and asses—roamed the open plains of the peninsula, while their massive robust cousin, the forest horse, lived singly or in small family groups nearer the cave. The steppes also hosted infrequent smaller bands of the lowland-dwelling relative of the goat, the saiga antelope.
The parkland between prairie and foothills was home to aurochs, the dark brown or black wild cattle that were the ancestors of gentler domestic breeds. The forest rhinoceros—related to brush-browsing later tropical species, but adapted to cool temperate forests—overlapped only slightly the territory of another variety of rhinos that preferred the grass of the parkland. Both, with their shorter, upright snout horns and horizontal head carriage, differed from the woolly rhino which, along with the woolly mammoths, were only seasonal visitors. They had a long anterior horn set at a forward-sloping angle and a downward head carriage useful for sweeping snow away from winter pastures. Their thick layer of subcutaneous fat and their deep red, longhaired overcoat and soft woolly undercoat were adaptations that confined them to cold climates. Their natural habitat was the northern freeze-dried steppes, the loess steppes.
Only when glaciers were on the land could there be loess steppes. The constant low pressure over the vast sheets of ice sucked moisture from the air, allowing little snow to fall in periglacial regions and creating a constant wind. Fine calcareous dust, loess, was picked up from the crushed rock at the edges of the glaciers and deposited for hundreds of miles. A short spring melted the scant snow and the top layer of permafrost enough for fast-rooting grasses and herbs to sprout. They grew quickly and dried into standing hay, thousands upon