ckled down his throat like some fiery
sauce. Slowly head and neck and body disappeared, and the tail
wriggled despairingly, for the tail of the snake folk can not die
till sundown, and when it went at last the fifteen rattles and the
button were keeping up an angry buzz. And all night long the King of
Snakes, twice as big as he ought to be, lay gorged and motionless upon
Old Rattler's rock.

And in the morning the little chipmunk ran out on a limb above him,
pursed up his lips, and made all kinds of faces, as much as to say, "I
did all this, and the whole world was watching while I did it."

[Illustration: KING SNAKE.]

THE STORY OF A STRANGE LAND

(FROM SCIENCE SKETCHES.)[9]

BY DAVID STARR JORDAN.

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD, JUNIOR, UNIVERSITY.

[9] Copyright, 1896, by A. C. Mclurg & Co.

"In one strange land,
And a long way from home,
I heard a mighty rumbling, and I couldn't tell where."
--NEGRO MELODY.

[Illustration]

It happened a long time ago, it may be fifty thousand years in round
numbers, or it may have been twice as many, that a strange thing
took place in the heart of the Great Mountains. It was in the middle
of the Pliocene epoch, a long, dull time that seemed as if it would
never come to an end. There was then on the east side of the Great
Divide a deep, rocky basin surrounded by high walls of granite gashed
to the base by the wash of many streams. In this basin, we know not
how--for the records all are burned or buried--the crust of the earth
was broken, and a great outflow of melted larva surged up from below.
This was no ordinary eruption, but a mighty outbreak of the earth's
imprisoned forces. The steady stream of lava filled the whole mountain
basin and ran out over its sides, covering the country all around so
deeply that it has never been seen since. More than four thousand
square miles of land lay buried under melted rock. No one can tell how
deep the lava is, for no one has ever seen the bottom. Within its bed
are deep clefts whose ragged walls descend to the depth of twelve
hundred feet, and yet give no glimpse of the granite below, while at
their side are mountains of lava whose crags tower a mile above the
bottom of the ravines.

[Illustration: "IT WOULD HISS AND BOIL HIGH IN THE AIR."]

At last, after many years or centuries--time does not count for much
in these Tertiary days--the flow of melted lava ceased.