THE CEMETERIES OP THE BAD LANDS. 163 



birds and insects avoid the herbless waste. Our mules toil on 

 in the withering heat of summer, and reach with weariness 

 the border of a shrunken stream on which to encamp. With 

 patient progress we arrive at a region which shows symptoms 

 of a change of scene. Ahead, appears a less monotonous land- 

 scape. Some breaks in the surface are revealed. There, in 

 the distance, are forms which remind us of architectural struc- 

 tures. We seem to see gables and towers. There rise the 

 vertical lines of columns and steeples and pinnacles. Is this a 

 city in the desert Persepolis on American soil? 



We press on. The illusion dissolves. Before us stretches 

 a wide excavation, down into the formations underneath. 

 Where are the materials removed from this emptied basin? 

 What power plowed up the strata and carted away the debris? 

 We come to the brink of the basin a vast rock basin cut 

 through beds of horizontal shales and soft limestones. The 

 sloping walls have been worn for a thousand centuries by the 

 rills formed from the winter rains. The fluted columns have 

 been grooved by water. The salient abutments have been 

 chiseled by the storm. 



The rock-layers are visible all around the depression. We 

 descend to the floor and trace their continuity from side to 

 side. Each layer was once a sea-bottom. But, behold the 

 relics of a former population scattered over this floor. Here 

 are the skulls of sheep-like creatures which are also pig-like ; 

 the carapaces of turtles unlike any turtles living; the shin- 

 bones of rhinoceroses which no longer roam in the jungle. 

 We turn our eyes again to the rocky layers, and lo! like 

 shelves of a vast cabinet, they hold the specimens which illus- 

 trate a fauna passed away a classified cabinet, where each 

 shelf is stored with the relics of its epoch, and the lower 

 shelves are filled with the souvenirs of the older time. 



What a place is this for reflection ! All about us are the 

 bones of extinct populations. They lie beneath us; they are 

 stored around us, and their empty sockets gaze out on us with 

 startled astonishment ; they rise above our heads. We are 

 sunken in the center of an ancient cemetery; we have burst 



