THE STORY OF A STRANGE LAND. 265 
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 astanding 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 
