6 
CURIOUS PEOPLE. 
It was my first day at the Centennial, and I had 
volunteered to relieve Mrs. Maxwell by standing 
for an hour, and answering questions, behind the 
iron paling that separated her “ Natural History 
Collection ” from the rest of the Kansas and Col- 
orado Building, one side of a wing of which it 
occupied. 
Within the enclosure was a miniature landscape, 
representing a plain, and a mountain side, appar- 
ently formed of rocks and crowned with ever- 
greens. Down the rugged descent leaped a little 
stream of sparkling water, which expanded at its 
base into a tiny lake, edged with pebbles and 
fringed, as was the brook-side, with growing grass 
and ferns. The water and the banks which con- 
fined it were peopled by aquatic creatures : fishes 
swimming in the lake— turtles sunning themselves 
on its half submerged rocks, while beavers, musk- 
rats and water-fowl seemed at home upon its 
margin. Between the cascade and lakelet ap- 
peared the irregular vine-fringed mouth of a cave, 
its dark moss-grown recesses soon lost from sight 
in shadowy gloom. Above it and upon the up- 
per heights of the mountain side — suggesting the 
altitudes at which they are found — were grouped 
those animals that frequent the Rocky Mountains ; 
fierce bears, shy mountain sheep, savage moun- 
tain lions or pumas, and a multitude of smaller 
creatures, each in an attitude of life-like action. 
