IV 

 GAVIA OF IMMER LAKE 



Once upon a time, it was four millions of years ago. 

 There were no people then all the way from Florida to 

 Alaska. There was, indeed, in all this distance, no land 

 to walk upon, except islands in the west where the 

 Rocky Mountains are now. That is the only place 

 where the country that is now the United States of 

 America stuck up out of the water. Everywhere else 

 were the waves of the sea. There were no people, even 

 on the Rocky Mountain Islands. None at all. 



No, the creatures that visited those island shores in 

 those old days were not people, but birds. Nearly as 

 large as men they were, and they had teeth on their 

 long slender jaws, and they had no wings. They came 

 to the islands, perhaps, only at nesting-time; for their 

 legs and feet were fitted for swimming and not walk- 

 ing, and they lived upon fish in the sea. So they dwelt, 

 with no man to see them, on the water that stretched 

 from sea to sea; and what their voices were like, no 

 man knows. 



A million years, perhaps, passed by, and then an- 

 other million, and maybe another million still; and the 

 birds without wings and with teeth were no more. In 



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