Unexplored!

nd let the purchaser do the work. Then it occurred to him to wonder if Ted would not have first to take

e Mexicans, (as the harried Ranger now counted on their doing), joining the rest of the camping party every night, at points they would agree upon. But first, Ace had made a flight to Fresno

een through. But at last they had relieved their minds to some extent, and one evening around the

ution of our earth, he has to know what scientists have established in the fields of chemistry, mechanics and geodesy,-the study of the curvature and elevation of the earth

heory, then

from the sun, it was less than a hundredth part of the parent body? And our earth is a good deal less t

ter, round eyed, while Te

heir own gravity-pull the tiny planetesimals nearest them, these bodies hurli

het things up some

d gases and water vapor, was condensing. Probably by the time it had engulfed all the stray planetesimals

nking?" gasped th

difference in your lifetime. It only shrinks at times;

s that been, sixte

t kept boiling, as it were, inside, and the molten matter kept breaking t

ave been hell," l

re volcanoes, and so on in a vicious circle, till finally, by the end of the Formative Era, so called, the

"I'd have calle

being formed, along with the granite continents. But while we are on the subject, I hope you boys will some day see The Valley of Ten Thousan

lace?" lau

rally

l us abo

ve Era came the Archeozoic Era, when life began in the form of am?bas or some simple form of protoplasm. For with the formation of the ga

atures come from?" Ted could n

of suns and planetary systems. But that theory can neither be proved nor disproved. When I was a student, Osborn's theory was the latest. That was in 1916. Without g

the sun, too," marveled Ted. "And

aters collected in the depressed areas over the heavier rock bottoms, the bas

rly a part of the oc

at or volc

ow did

n decidedly upward, while the trend of the ocean floor has been downward. At that, the shell of t

oceans would be growing

ikely be all ocean. And there used to be far more land, in proportion, than there is now. Th

ountains, the steeper the stream beds, and hence the faster the streams, and the fas

ins get rebuilt?" Pedro

and darkness was upon the face of the deep.' It is still shrinking. And this internal movement is felt on the surface in differences that generally

ong, or more, have been raised near one end of the continent or the other. In addition, there have been major re-adjustments that thrust whole continents higher and ocean beds lower. Geologists find evidence of at least six of these major breaks in the earth crust,-marking the be

r again. "Don't tell me thi

turn in. At these times when the lands are at their highest and the oceans are smallest in breadth, (because greate

and Asia?" s

tiles there was nothing to divide the Atlantic from the Pacific. Added to that, the high mountain ranges took the moisture out of the winds from the oceans, as the

ve to adapt themselves to life on high, cold elevations, or in dry, hot desert areas, or t

od, a rock from which I showed you, if you remember), the Jurassic period, which gave rise to flying reptiles, from which our first birds were derived; t

he seas by squid-like mollusks. In those days all the earth was level, s

to flowers and hardwood forests, peopled with insects and mammals. Only the most intell

were dinosaurs?"

of them?" laughed Ace. "Picture a

tested the old ma

ly true," said

hat with his long hind legs that he could walk half erect on. There were some as small as eight or ten inc

ll that?" protested th

was one found a hundred years ago in Oxford, England. We have heaps of fossils of them out West here. In fact, this p

t people?" g

, the Triceratops, dinosaurs twice as heavy as elephants, that looked like horned toads, didn't have two pounds of brains apiece, or so we infer from the size of their skul

eaved a sigh of relief. "I'd shore hate

on any one's intelligence," shouted Ped

t it in battle and one over the nose. Of course he was the largest animal of his time, but he probably fought rival swains for his lady love. We have a pair of Triceratops horns in the National Museum. One is broken, and it must have been broke

orris promised the rest of the story thei

e was worth. Every one started wide awake, and Norris threw a handful of browse on the fire to light the

hed, while the boys fairly rolled o

daily in search of the Mexicans

narrow canyon perhaps 200 feet deep. A flow of molten basalt, accompanied by cinders, had been erupted from the 8,000 foot peak at the upper end of the canyon, and had flowed down in a layer 200 feet thick when it hardened. It had flowed,-as the underlying rock still showed in places,-over a lateral moraine or rock débri

show the boys), was that on top of the volcanic rock lay the deposit from another glacier, one

all snug for the night beside a stretch of rapids, where they could look forward to catching trout for breakfast. Then, lighting his pipe, a

ater vapor in the interior of the planet rise in the hearts of the mountain ranges, and often break throug

you will have a good chance to see them in this region. At the same time, during these glacial periods, the astronomer could explain how it is that the temperature is from ten to twenty degrees colder in both winter and summer than it is now, so that helps the ice to accumulate. Then the glacier, flowing slowly, slowly,

"How long ago did you say t

time of the first men,-p

ou showed us to-day are 30,00

period before that are older still,-a so

r ice ages come? Did yo

nes. There were two away back

e been the same sinc

have another ice age. We'll hope man has found a better way to keep warm by that time. Our cl

l these ups and downs of clim

of growth in the Big Trees. Don't you remember those cut stumps, and the thousands of rings we counted

prospector could articulate, as a

circles, but without finding a trace

he canyon and over the rocks that bordered a green-white water-fall. The wind blowing the spray in first one direction and then another, they got well wetted, though the clear California sunshine soo

oped to drink, he found that, rhythmically, a larger swell, (call it a wave), would slap him in the face, till once, blinded by the unexpected onslaught, he all but lost his balance. It would have been inevitable, had he done so, that he sho

ed this hanging valley on either side, with no greenery save the picturesque bits that g

forests of silver firs, jeweled with occasional emerald meadows fragrant with purple lupin and gay with crimson columbine and

e and her half-grown fawn in the edge of the clearing watching them wistfully as they threw their scraps away. Pedro, approaching softly, and casting peace offerings before him, was able to approach to within several paces of the mother, though her young hopeful was less trustful. Having probably never seen a biped before, both animals were c

t glacier. The opening here between the two folds of mountains again disclosed their river, now smaller, but if anything even noisier, by reason of its race over

no news of the fugitive fir

ven splinters that curved out over a little hollow, making an ideal shelter, with its fubsy foliage, its storm-twisted limbs making natural seats, and a fl

stance to the top of the ridge, where they could gaze across at snow-capped pe

rom behind an edge of rock. It was an animal possibly a hundred pounds in weight,-the California mountain lion is not a heavy animal,-and for all its wide, heavy looking fee

treat to see a

zens of the wild, none are so shy of human kind, in regions where they are hunted

lying so still that, had they not seen it move, they might have glanced squarely in

g around the rock. But did they fight? Not a bit of it! With hiss and arching back, and all claws out like the picture of a witch cat, the young cougar challenged his playfellow, then retreated as the other would have given him a swipe of his paw. Back to his tree he raced, the o

granite slope, the first cat pounced after it playfully, finally catching the roll

chase it away. To the surprise of the onlookers, the huge cat pounced on the stone as playfully as before. Ace now hurled a small rock so that it just escaped the t

o, when he heard about it,

te,-hard for the dogs to get a scent, but there's lots of lions there, in among the rocks. Fina

asked

d her den, and drag

lar

e of house cat

n wh

and tuk 'em home. I sold 'e

ays act the way thi

had a lion up in a scrub oak. It came down fighting, so the boy had to circle around trying to find a chance to shoot. Then it jumped up into a pine tree an

ver fight?" m

come down wounded, but the

ears a

dly about them. They're m