You have heard about the early peoples who found out how to use tools, how to build fires, how to make clothes out of skins of animals, and how to do all the other everyday things that once had to be done for the very first time. Science has found out for us the facts about how all these things were done first. But in the old days, before there was any knowledge of science, people had to explain such matters as best they could, by means of legends, such as that of Prometheus, who, as you have heard, stole fire from heaven. Here is a legend that suggests how water was first tamed and made a servant of man.
In the days of old, when wonderful things happened, there lived in a pleasant dwelling beside a brook in the forest a young girl named Sella, a name which means "a shadow". Although she was very beautiful, so that everyone admired her, she did not like to stay very much of the time with other people. She liked better to gather flowers on the bank of the stream, or to sit in the shade of a great rock listening to the sweet murmur of the flowing water. It was her delight to wander up the stream, tracing to the source in the mountains each of the little brooks that fed the larger one. She knew every little spring that stole forth from under a hanging rock, and every little rill that came trickling down the bare hillside. Often she rowed her little boat out on the lake or on the wide river into which the stream ran.
In the days when Sella lived girls were not taught anything except the things that it was thought belonged to woman's place, such as sewing, the keeping of the house, and the art of making one's self charming and agreeable. For a girl to go out into the world to make her own way as girls do now was an unheard-of thing. Girls must stay at home and leave adventure to the men of the family. Sella was not at all contented with such an arrangement. She looked at her two brothers enviously, thinking, "If I were only a boy, I could follow the river down to the sea and see all the strange peoples and customs in other parts of the world. I should like to see what kind of houses they have, and how they build their stately ships, what kind of flowers grow in their gardens, and what fruits ripen in their orchards. Here men make their living by raising sheep, but there I hear they sprinkle the great plains with corn, which springs up and ripens and is harvested to give bread to all the nations. I long to see all these things, and I would have seen them, long ago, if I were not so unlucky as to be a girl."