230 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



horn antelopes and black-tail or white-tail deer 

 nearly, or quite, identical with the modern 

 forms. They were the same animals which I 

 and my fellow ranchmen hunted when, in the 

 early eighties of the last century, our branded 

 cattle were first driven to the Little Missouri. 

 They swarmed on the upper Missouri and the 

 Yellowstone when Lewis and Clark found the 

 bison and wapiti so tame that they would hardly 

 move out of the way, while the grizzly bears 

 slept on the open plains and fearlessly attacked 

 the travellers. But in the Pleistocene, at the 

 time we are considering, the day of these modern 

 creatures had only begun. The contents of the 

 tar -pits show that the animals named above 

 were few in number, compared to the great 

 beasts with which they were associated. 



The giant among these Pleistocene giants of 

 California, probably the largest mammal that 

 ever walked the earth, was the huge imperial 

 elephant. This mighty beast stood at least 

 two feet higher than the colossal African ele- 

 phant of to-day, which itself is bigger than the 

 mammoth, and as big as any other extinct 

 elephant. The curved tusks of the imperial 

 elephant reached a length of sixteen feet. A 

 herd of such mighty beasts must have been an 

 awe-inspiring sight — had there been human 



