In fact it started much before you or I were born, and even before our parents, or their parents, or their parents, or even theirs were born.
In those days there used to be a thick, lush-green forest in the middle of the earth. It was so huge that it covered the entire land in the middle-earth, and only the north and south poles could be seen, covered with snow. You could keep on walking till your feet ached, and still not reach the edge of the forest. You could hardly make out where the forest ended, because all round it lay a thick green fog which hid everything. You could get lost in the forest and nobody would ever find you, except by some magic, which only a very few people knew.
This was called the Jungle of Maths.
In the beginning it used to be a beautiful forest, with small, laughing streams hurrying along to meet the big gurgling river which flowed in the forest. There were thousands of trees, tall and short, thick and thin, brown and yellow, green and white, all whispering, murmuring and tossing their heads as they talked to each other. There were millions of flowers, blue, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, and all other colors you can think of, making the forest bright and nice smelling. There was lots of sunlight to light up every corner and lots of rain to help things grow. And there were millions of butterflies, always busy running around, taking messages from plant to plant.
The nicest thing about this forest was the Numbers. There were a lot of Numbers living in this jungle, small and playful little things, always running about and having fun. There were zillions of them. They lived on trees, in the grass, in the streams and even flew around. They drank the nectar from the flowers and fresh water from the streams. The jungle would echo to the sound of their merry laughter as they played around. There were
Onnies - the babies
Tworoos - the toddlers
Threebees - the kiddos
Fourers - the smallies
Fivellas - the smarties
Sixibolas - the biggies
Sevenchinnies - the teenagies
Eightopompoms - the grownies,
and
Nineforaspinners - the oldies
The Numbers lived in small houses made of many types of brackets. They lived in small families or large families, and in all kinds of mixes. You could find a family of only nineforaspinners, (like this - 999999999999999), or a family of all from the babies to the oldies (like this - 5591372343556179872219934276887438776).
The Numbers were very happy and gay. They were always running around and dancing and playing and swimming and climbing trees and skipping and hopping and shouting with joy.
That was, of course, in the olden times, when anyone could go there for a picnic or a swim or just for a long, rambling walk. Children would go there and collect beautiful flowers and have picnics, with the Numbers all round them. Parents would be happy to see them have such fun with all the Numbers who could teach them wonderful things. The Numbers were happy to have real children to play with.
You see, this was before the time that the four terrible giants came to stay in the jungle.
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