Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... arid hills are but cemeteries. In these surrounding lands--Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado-- the graveyards are found. Jurassic reptiles, mailed creatures of terrible power, lie there embedded. The feet of the shepherd, the hunter's and the cowboy's pony, have stumbled against great bones. The huge remains formed a feature in the desert landscape.* Around my horizons are lands that have been submerged in water, that have been earthquake shaken, and over which glaciers have crept in the by-gone days; lands that were once the bottom of ancient seas; that cover the remains of forests below forests, and beneath whose soils there are secrets hidden. In Utah cairns and mounds have been lately opened. Remains of the dead have been found therein. To the south of Strong's Knob, within yonder mass of black limestone crags, bones, cave-entombed, have been brought to light. So ancient were they, those bones, that ere the smoke of the miner's blast had cleared away, they crumbled to dust on the cavern floor. Science will never know to what kind of creatures those bones belong, nor will it ever be able, perhaps, to ascribe an age to this skull. This is a literal fact . In Wyoming the "finds" of fossils were so made. This was in the dry-washes, among those frayed, crumbled, honey-combed rocks near the Green River and Church Buttes country. In Colorado, the herdsmen had built the foundation of a shelter cabin with the great round vertebra of the disjointed monsters. Eastward I see a dim range of hills. Along the flanks of those Wasatch spurs, there was once a battle fought. In the distant past, the dead from that aboriginal strife were buried in the conglomerate caves. Here, also, are to be found similar cave-like openings; but the relic came not from...