THE STORY OF A STXANGE LAND. 26$ 



tail Deer Creek, they overcame the Undine Falls in 

 Lava Creek and passed its steep obsidian walls, 

 which not all the fishes in the world could climb. 



In the Gibbon River the cataracts have proved 

 to the trout an impassable barrier; but, strangely 

 enough, its despised associate, the sluggish, chunky 

 blob, a little soft-bodied, smooth, black, tadpole- 

 like fellow, with twinkling eyes and a voracious 

 appetite, a fish who cannot leap at all, has 

 crossed this barrier. Hundreds of blob live under 

 the stones in the upper reaches of the stream, the 

 only fish in the Gibbon waters. There he is, and 

 it is a standing puzzle even to himself to know how 

 he got there. We might imagine, perhaps, that 

 some far-off ancestor, some ancient Queen of the 

 Blobs, was seized by an osprey and carried away 

 in the air. Perhaps an eagle was watching and 

 forced the osprey to give up its prey. Perhaps in 

 the struggle the blob escaped, falling into the river 

 above the falls, to form the beginning of the future 

 colony. At any rate, there is the great impassable 

 waterfall, the blob above it and below. The os- 

 prey has its nest on a broken pine-tree above the 

 cataract, and its tyrant master, the bald eagle, 

 watches it from some still higher crag whenever it 

 goes fishing. 



It came to pass at last that Marshall McDonald, 

 whose duty as United States Fish Commissioner it 

 was to look after the fishes wherever they may be, 

 sent me to this country to see what could be done 

 for his wards. It was a proud day when I set out 

 from Mammoth Hot Springs astride a black cayuse, 

 or Indian pony, which answered to the name of 



