The Kangaroo Rat 



Canon with the San Francisco Mountain on its 

 edge. He tried a long time to use a certain 

 large stone for a peak to his mountain, but it 

 was past his strength, and he resented, rather 

 than profited by, any help I gave him. This 

 stone gave him endless trouble for a time. He 

 could not use it, nor even get rid of it, until he 

 discovered that he could at least dig the earth 

 from under it, and so keep it going down, until 

 finally it settled at the bottom of the box and 

 troubled him no more. 



He used to take a lot of comfort out of jump- 

 ing clear from the top of the Frisco Peak 

 across the Grand Canon into Utah (two hun- 

 dred miles), at the other side of the box, and 

 back home again to the Peak (six thousand 

 feet). 



I watched, sketched, and studied him as 

 well as I could, considering his shyness and 

 nocturnal habits, and I learned daily to admire 

 him more. His untiring devotion to his nightly 

 geographical lesson was marvellous. His talent 

 for heaving up new mountain-ranges was aston- 

 ishing, positively volcanic. When first I sus- 

 pected his existence, I had been willing to call 



252 







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im 



