Before the periods of those industrious peoples -- the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, and the cliff-dwellers of the sad southwest, and the earth-dwellers of Nebraska -- this land about us, newly risen from primeval sea, this mystical sunland of the younger world, became a land of trails. At the foot of Scotts Bluff mountain, in the bad lands north of Harrison, in the bluffs of the Running water, are found fossils, telling an unrecorded story. Pterodactylus, the flying lizard of long ago, turtles, and the bones of the Mastodon are here. We may yet find trails of Irish Elk and Cave Bear, which the first men slew for food and for adventure.

First men were strong -- grotesque and powerful -- huge hairy frames and knotted twisted knees, with muscles which could tear limbs from the trees. The battle of the world was for the physically endowed. They cared nut for the un-named stars; nor that the seccond sign of the Zodiac had appeared, and smiling on the world, was yielding a new influx and order of intelligence. They knew not thai man's mentality had begun to grow, and would continue until the world was swept free of the cumbersome, useless creatures of Pliocene, and their old trails would be no more.

These trails are buried now, under the drill of glaciers and the wash and ashes of the ages. And the trails of glaciers, the ice-grind

of centuries are strewn with stranger rocks and stones, torn from the breast of their mother mountains, and carried on long journeys, and each peculiar kind, and its worn face, tells the story of its pilgrimage.