TAKING AND BEING TAKEN.
Exploration gives us a past history of the plains which is interesting in the extreme. Our party spent some weeks in exploring for fossils beyond Sheridan, and were richly rewarded. In the great ocean which once covered the land, the wonderful reptiles of the cretaceous age swarmed in prodigious numbers, and their fierce struggles upon and under its surface made "the deep to boil like a pot." The mysterious Leviathan, described in the forty-first chapter of Job, had its prototype in more than one of the monsters of that period:
"Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
"Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.
"Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
"His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
"The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they can not be moved.
"He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.