not move. Slowly, I scratched
about his ears and neck and down beneath the fierce jaws. The only
sign he gave was to raise his chin a trifle that I might better caress
him.

That was enough! From that moment I have never again felt suspicion of
Raja, as I immediately named him. Somehow all sense of loneliness
vanished, too--I had a dog! I had never guessed precisely what it was
that was lacking to life in Pellucidar, but now I knew it was the total
absence of domestic animals.

Man here had not yet reached the point where he might take the time
from slaughter and escaping slaughter to make friends with any of the
brute creation. I must qualify this statement a trifle and say that
this was true of those tribes with which I was most familiar. The
Thurians do domesticate the colossal lidi, traversing the great Lidi
Plains upon the backs of these grotesque and stupendous monsters, and
possibly there may also be other, far-distant peoples within the great
world, who have tamed others of the wild things of jungle, plain or
mountain.

The Thurians practice agriculture in a crude sort of way. It is my
opinion that this is one of the earliest steps from savagery to
civilization. The taming of wild beasts and their domestication
follows.

Perry argues that wild dogs were first domesticated for hunting
purposes; but I do not agree with him. I believe that if their
domestication were not purely the result of an accident, as, for
example, my taming of the hyaenodon, it came about through the desire
of tribes who had previously domesticated flocks and herds to have some
strong, ferocious beast to guard their roaming property. However, I
lean rather more strongly to the theory of accident.

As I sat there upon the beach of the little fiord eating my unpalatable
shell-fish, I commenced to wonder how it had been that the four savages
had been able to reach me, though I had been unable to escape from my
natural prison. I glanced about in all directions, searching for an
explanation. At last my eyes fell upon the bow of a small dugout
protruding scarce a foot from behind a large boulder lying half in the
water at the edge of the beach.

At my discovery I leaped to my feet so suddenly that it brought Raja,
growling and bristling, upon all fours in an instant. For the moment I
had forgotten him. But his savage rumbling did not cause me any
uneasiness. He glanced quickly about in all directions as if searching
for the