THE STORY OF A STRANGE LAND. 



457 



east slope of the Divide, the great chain of the Rocky Mountains 

 shrinks to a narrow plateau of damp meadow, not a fourth of a 

 mile in width ; and some years, when the snows are heavy and 

 melt late in the spring, this whole region is covered with stand- 

 ing water. The trout had bided their time until they found it 

 so, and now they were ready for action. Before the water was 

 drained they had crossed the Divide and were descending on the 

 Atlantic side toward the Yellowstone Lake. As the days went 

 by, this colony of bold trout spirits grew and multiplied and 

 filled the waters of the great clear lake, where their descendants 

 remain to this day. And no other fishes— not the chub, nor the 



Kkitlku's Cascade "i Fiukim ii.i. Kivki;. 



sucker, nor the white-fish, nor the minnow, nor the blob— had ever 

 climbed Pacific Creek. None of them were able to follow where 

 the trout had gone^ and none of them have ever been seen in the 

 Yellowstone Lake. What the trout had done in this lake— their 

 victories and defeats, their struggles with the bears and pelicans, 

 and with the terrible worm, joint enemy of trout and pelicans 

 alike— must be left for another story. 



So the trout climbed the Yellowstone Falls by way of the back 

 staircase. For all we know, they have gone down it on the other 

 side. And in a similar way. by stealing over from Black-tail 

 Deer Creek, they overcame the Undine Falls in Lava Creek and 

 passed its steep obsidian walls, which not all the fishes m the 

 world could climb. 



