The Rocks of the John Day Valley. 171 



dawn! Strange, beautiful coincidence of fact 

 with system! 



The next glimpse we get is of the middle 

 Tertiary period. It is distinct enough to en- 

 able us to recognize upon those lake shores 

 the rhinoceros, the oreodon, the tapir, and 

 then closes abruptly to give place to a record 

 of fire and of violence the fire of the vol- 

 cano, and the violence of the earthquake 

 bringing upon the life of the period a blotted, 

 illegible night record in its history. 



But another dawn came then, and we see, 

 among the forms that move along those 

 shores, the familiar ones of the horse and 

 the camel. Again the legible record closes 

 and thirty feet or more of ashes and volcanic 

 cinders cover the land and choke and poison 

 the waters. 



A long, dark, nearly illegible part of the 

 record follows, during which no life history 

 was written, but during which the old throes 

 of violence seem to have passed away, and 

 the laboratories of the earth seem to have lost 

 the power of forcing heated vapors to the 



