feet across. Another was a stone hat, standing on its crown, with a brim
two yards in diameter. Occasionally there was a figure which had lost its
capital, and so looked like a broken pillar, a sugar loaf, a pear.
Imbedded in these grotesques of sandstone were fossils of wood, of
fresh-water shells, and of fishes.

It was a land of extravagances and of wonders. The marvellous adventures
of the "Arabian Nights" would have seemed natural in it. It reminded you
after a vague fashion of the scenery suggested to the imagination by some
of its details or those of the "Pilgrim's Progress." Sindbad the Sailor
carrying the Old Man of the Sea; Giant Despair scowling from a
make-believe window in a fictitious castle of eroded sandstone; a roc with
wings eighty feet long, poising on a giddy pinnacle to pounce upon an
elephant; pilgrim Christian advancing with sword and buckler against a
demon guarding some rocky portal, would have excited no astonishment here.

Of a sudden there came an adventure which gave opening for
knight-errantry. As Thurstane, Coronado, and Texas Smith were riding a few
hundred yards ahead of the caravan, and just emerging from what seemed an
enormous court or public square, surrounded by ruined edifices of gigantic
magnitude, they discovered a man running toward them in a style which
reminded the Lieutenant of Timorous and Mistrust flying from the lions.
Impossible to see what he was afraid of; there was a broad, yellow plain,
dotted with monuments of sandstone; no living thing visible but this man
running.

He was an American; at least he had the clothes of one. As he approached,
he appeared to be a lean, lank, narrow-shouldered, yellow-faced,
yellow-haired creature, such as you might expect to find on Cape Cod or
thereabouts. Hollow-chested as he was, he had a yell in him which was