Pointing to the other side of the valley, Louis told us that there lay the bones of an immense snake, all turned to stone. This sudden voice from the past ages sounded in the Professor's ears like the blare of a trumpet to a warrior. He hurried us forward in the direction indicated, and, locking arms with the bloody-shirted little Frenchman, strode on in advance. I wish his class could have seen him thus traversing the desolate bed where that old sunken volcano went to sleep. We were glad that the latter was still asleep, and had never acquired the habit of snorting into wakefulness, and pelting explorers with hot rocks.
What mysteries, I have often thought, might we not discover, on looking down the throat of a healthy volcano, if some wise alchemist could only brew a dose sufficiently powerful to stop the fiery fellow's foaming at the mouth! Or, better still, if it could reach the bowels of the earth, and keep the whole system quiet, while we, puny mortals, like trichina mites, swarmed down the interior, and bored scientifically back to the crust again. Earth's veins run golden blood, and we might be gorged with that, perhaps, ere making exit into the sunshine again.
A shout from the further edge of the ravine cut short our speculations, and called our attention to the Professor. He stood waving his slouched hat for an instant, and then bent close over the ground, in earnest scrutiny.
A few moments later, and we all stood beside the huge fossil. It lay exposed, upon a bed of slate, looking very much like a seventy-foot serpent, carved in stone. Part of the remains had been taken up to the town, and spread over the bench, in the shop of Louis. From what was left, the jaws appeared to have been originally over six feet long, the sharp hooked and cone-shaped teeth being still very perfect. A few broad fragments of ribs showed that, in circumference, the animal's body had been about the size of a puncheon. We felt confident that the specimen was a very rare one, as Muggs had never seen any thing like it, even in England. It now rests in the museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"This fossil, gentlemen," said the Professor, "is that of a Mosasaurus, a huge reptile which existed in the cretaceous sea. This appears to be one of the largest members of the family yet discovered, its length, as you will perceive, being over fifty feet. The species to which it belonged swarmed in immense numbers, but were surrounded by monsters even more remarkable than they. The deep which they inhabited must have been constantly lashed and torn with their fierce conflicts; for it was an age of war, and the powers of offense and defense, which the monsters of that period possessed, were terrible. Winged reptiles filled the air, in appearance more hideous than any creation of the imagination. Following close upon the Reptilian came the Mammalian age, and I hold that with the largest of the mammals came man, rude in tastes and uncouth in form, but even then ruling as king of the animal creation. Wielded by a strength equal to that of a gorilla, his club would dash in the skull of any beast which dare dispute dominion with him."
The text thus suggested him, the Professor then diverged into an argument on his pet theory of man's early existence.
A trivial circumstance connected with our discovery arrested my attention, and, from a sportsman's stand-point, suggested a little theory of my own. The head of the saurian rested on the basin's edge, its jaws touching, with their stony tips, the prairie, while down into the valley below stretched the body and tail. This little fact dove-tailed itself into some incidents of the past, and gave rise to quite a train of speculation.
Some years ago I hunted alligators in Mississippi. Sitting on the bank of a sluggish bayou, I would watch the surface of the water, close under which were visible the noses of countless buffalo fish, floating as one sees minnows do in glass jars. Under the hot sun all nature seemed asleep. Soon, however, a black knot, an ugly dark wart, not larger than one's two fists, would make its appearance, floating, like some charred fragment, slowly along.
To a stranger, the only suspicious circumstance would have been, that where there was no current whatever, it still continued its motion, the same as before. The experienced eye recognized this object as the nose of an alligator, behind which, and just at the surface, as it got opposite, the ugly eyes would become visible, looking out for hogs or dogs, as they came to drink under the bank.
I never had the patience to wait for the finale of the scene; but had I done so, I should have beheld the knot float closer in, and, just after passing the victim, a tail would have come out of the water, and, with a curving blow forward, knocked the prize out from shore, and in front of the devourer's jaws. It was my good fortune, frequently, to send a Ballard rifle-ball into the pirate's eyes. In such cases there was usually a tremendous commotion in the water, accompanied by a strong smell of musk, and the wounded reptile would then make straight for shore, and run his head upon it. Under such circumstances, the creature always sought at least that much of dry land to die upon, seeming as anxious as man that its lamp of life should not be extinguished under water.