om five to
twenty-five gallons of oil. The flesh is very good, being something
between beef and pork, and this one furnished us with several meals,
and was an agreeable change from our fish diet.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE COW FISH.]

OLD RATTLER AND THE KING SNAKE[8]

BY DAVID STARR JORDAN.

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD, JUNIOR, UNIVERSITY.

[8] From _The Popular Science Monthly_ by permission.

"I only know thee humble, bold,
Haughty, with miseries untold,
And the old curse that left thee cold,
And drove thee ever to the sun
On blistering rocks ...
Thou whose fame
Searchest the grass with tongue of flame,
Making all creatures seem thy game,
When the whole woods before thee run,
Asked but--when all is said and done--
To lie, untrodden, in the sun!"
--BRET HARTE.

[Illustration]

Old Rattler was a snake, of course, and he lives in the King's River
Canon, high up and down deep in the mountains of California.

He had a hole behind and below a large, flat granite rock, not far
from the river, and he called it his home; for in it he slept all
night and all winter, but when the sun came back in the spring and
took the frost out of the air and the rocks, then he crawled out to
lie until he got warm. The stream was clear and swift in the canon,
the waterfalls sang in the side gulch of Roaring River, the wind
rustled in the long needles of the yellow pines, and the birds called
to their mates in the branches. But Old Rattler did not care for such
things. He was just a snake, you know, and his neighbors did not think
him a good snake at that, for he was surly and silent, and his big,
three-cornered, "coffin-shaped" head, set on a slim, flat neck, was
very ugly to see. But when he opened his mouth he was uglier still,
for in his upper jaw he had two long fangs, and each one was filled
with deadly poison. His vicious old head was covered with gray and
wrinkled scales, and his black, beadlike eyes snapped when he opened
his mouth to find out whether his fangs were both in working order.

Old Rattler was pretty stiff when he first came from his hole on the
morning of this story. He had lain all night coiled up like a rope
among the rocks, and his tail felt very cold. But the glad sun warmed
the cockles of his heart, and in an hour or two he became limber, and
this made him happy in his snaky fashion. B