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countries. The southern face of these cliffs loomed high and forbidding, rising to
an altitude of some two hundred feet, sheer and precipitous, without a break that
the eye could perceive. How I was to find a crossing I could not guess. Whether
to search to the east toward the still loftier barrier-cliffs fronting upon the ocean,
or westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question which baffled me.
Were there many passes or only one? I had no way of knowing. I could but trust
to chance. It never occurred to me that Nobs had made the crossing at least
once, possibly a greater number of times, and that he might lead me to the pass;
and so it was with no idea of assistance that I appealed to him as a man alone
with a dumb brute so often does.
"
Nobs," I said, "how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs?"
I do not say that he understood me, even though I realize that an Airedale is a
mighty intelligent dog; but I do swear that he seemed to understand me, for he
wheeled about, barking joyously and trotted off toward the west; and when I
didn't follow him, he ran back to me barking furiously, and at last taking hold of
the calf of my leg in an effort to pull me along in the direction he wished me to go.
Now, as my legs were naked and Nobs' jaws are much more powerful than he
realizes, I gave in and followed him, for I knew that I might as well go west as
east, as far as any knowledge I had of the correct direction went.
We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance. The ground was
rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing animals, alone, in pairs and in
herds--a motley aggregation of the modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A
huge woolly mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant fern--a
mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him grazed an aurochs bull
with a cow and a calf, close beside a lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer,
antelope, bison, horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time, and
at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its huge tail and massive
hind feet to tear the leaves from a tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with
the present--while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of
pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed scarce sixty years
old. Nobs was a parvenu; but it failed to worry him.
As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and several great
amphibians, but none of them attacked us. As we were topping a rise in the
middle of the afternoon, I saw something that brought me to a sudden stop.
Calling Nobs in a whisper, I cautioned him to silence and kept him at heel while I
threw myself flat and watched, from behind a sheltering shrub, a body of warriors
approaching the cliff from the south. I could see that they were Galus, and I
guessed that Du-seen led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and
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