CHAPTER VIII. 



THE ' GREAT AMERICAN DESERT" ITS FOSSIL WEALTH AX ILLUSION DISPELCED 

 FIRES ACCORDING TO NOVELS AND ACCORDING TO FACT SENSATIONAL HEROES 

 AND HEROINES PRAIRIE DOGS AND THEIR HABITS HAWK AND DOG AND HAWK 

 AND CAT. 



NEXT morning, as the first gray darts of dawn 

 fell against our windows, Mr. Colon lifted up a 

 sleepy head and gazed out. Then came that quick 

 jerk into an upright position which one assumes when 

 startled suddenly from a drowsy state to one of in- 

 tense interest. The motion caused a similar one on 

 the part of each of us, as if a sort of jumping- 

 jack set of string nerves ran up our backs, and a man 

 under the cars had pulled them all simultaneously. 



We were on the great earth-ocean ; upon either 

 side, until striking against the shores of the horizon, 

 the billows of buffalo-grass rolled away. It seemed 

 as if the Mighty Ruler had looked upon these waters 

 when the world was young, and said to them, "Ye 

 waves, teeming with life, be ye earth, and remain 

 in form as now, until the planet which bears you dis- 

 solves ! " And so, frozen into stillness at the instant, 

 what were then billows of water now stretch away 

 billows of land into what seems to the traveler in- 

 finite distance, with the same long roll lapping against 

 and upon distant luttes that the Atlantic has to-day 



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