The bison is rearing back on its haunches, and there is a patch of red paint, like an open wound, just over the region of its heart.

Let us try to read the riddle.

It may well embody a charm that ran somewhat thus: "With these weapons, and by these encircling tactics, may we slay a fat bison, O ye powers of the dark!" Depend upon it, the men who went half a mile into the bowels of a mountain, to paint things up on the walls, did not do so merely for fun.

This is a very eerie place, and I daresay most of us would not like to spend the night there alone; though I know a pre-historian who did.

In Australia, as we shall see later on, rock-paintings of game-animals, not so lifelike as these of the old days, but symbolic almost beyond all recognizing, form part of solemn ceremonies whereby good hunting is held to be secured.