a scene.

from a tunnel in the cliff above. A short cut to the left over vast rocks fallen from above, brings us to the gorge of the higher level where it enters the tunnel, and I pass along its smooth bed in wonder at the close seclusion so near the summit of the mountain. On one side the precipices rise three hundred feet, on the other conic masses aspire, and are no doubt the dents of its keeled backbone. Between them is a little slope of grass and weed, a sight strangely rare in this region. But fossils I could not find successfully; indications there were not a few, and of large beasts, but nothing sufficiently well preserved to be sure of. I searched carefully, but night was coming on and darkness added horrors to such So I hastily descended the ravine. As I went I passed some washed stones in its sandy bottom. One was strange in form, and I picked it out. It was heavy and massive, and lo! a bone unworn and freshly broken from some monster exceeding anything I had yet obtained. I hastened away and resolved to return again, meanwhile speculating on what my bone could mean. I am rarely unable to place a bone or fragment, but this one defied my lore. Part of a skull, but of huge pro portions, it looked one while like part of an under jaw, again like the basal support of a huge horn. When I reached my faithful beast night had fallen, and I wrapped the precious fragment in my overcoat, strapped it behind my saddle, and made for camp. As I rode through the brush my straps gave way, my bone fell to the ground, and I had lost the result of my toil.

Another morning saw me on the horse and following my trail through the sage-brush. Near the mountain I found my bone laid. safely away under a bush. Then for my high cañon. Again I was there, again I traversed its avenue. I found nothing, I saw saw nothing, I left it. I searched the surrounding cliffs and found a novel companion of the old elephants in a tapiroid quadruped as large as the Indian rhinoceros, which I afterward named Palaeosyops vallidens. At evening I returned and passed down the cañon again, as I crossed a ledge the idea occurred to me to look back from that point. I looked long and carefully but saw nothing. I gave it up; the monster was hidden in some crevice or covered by debris so that I should never find him; that night I resolved on another course for the future.

The next morning I started for the ledges of the Haystack

Mountain, and rode briskly past the gray walls of the Mammoth Buttes. But the alkaline soil deceived Hardshell; time and again he sank in the treacherous dirt, and finally, sorely sprained, limped like a victim of the street pavement. There was no alternative

but to take a day in the Buttes again, and, nothing loth, I sought the cañon of the peaks, for one more search for the proprietor of my unnameable bone. I found my ledge, and remembered my thought to look back from it. I did so, and spied a red mass projecting from the wash; I dug it up; 'twas a bone; beyond I found another, and then part of a large shoulder-blade, then the hinder part of a skull; and so I had discovered the grave of another monster, of larger build than any I had seen. I paced the cañon for more fragments, I scanned every foot of the cliff, but without success. At last I wandered toward the spot where a moraine filled its upper end, and looking at my feet as I walked, saw again the welcome red-rusted bone enter the rock. Here was the fountain head. Pick, sledge and chisel soon exposed an enormous skull with a perfect set of teeth, a huge polished tusk of saber form, curving downward from the jaw, and a pair of massive horns rising from each eyebrow. His muzzle was soon exposed; its end had a pair of massive overhanging cornices, which met in a deep notch at the middle, and below this point the conic end of the bone projected downward. Removing a mass of rock the shoulder- blade was exposed, a huge plate from two to three feet wide, and close alongside his pelvis, nearly complete. When I had laid the hip-bones bare their expanse measured about four and half feet. Better if possible than these, I exposed the perfect-thigh bone, with a head as large as a cannon-ball. This ran directly into the cliff, which had a dangerous face. Masses, tons in weight, were ready to drop at a moment's notice, and every blow of the sledge seemed to loosen them the more. For four days I worked with my men in this remote altitude, before we secured all. And we were not alone in our exile. A pair of golden eagles had their eyrie close at hand, and they sailed over our heads all day long, uttering hostile cries, as warning us off from abodes they only allowed the mountain sheep to share. One evening a large owl flitted across the cañon, and by day, in strange contrast to the forbidding wildness of the spot, a pair of hummingbirds chased each other among the few composite that bloomed on a slope between the peaks.

At length we wrapped up the invaluable relics of this ancient king-whose mausoleum now is the Mammoth Buttes, more perennial than the tomb of Cheops, more vast than the labyrinth of Minosand bore them over the "wind pass" and down the great curved cañon. The skull weighed nearly 200 pounds, and it was found to be no light toil to carry it up the high cliffs that bounded the cañon to the north, then slide it down another declivity of two hundred feet, then over another vast mass of bluffs, and finally down a rocky precipice of three hundred or more feet to a point accessible to our wagons-altogether, a trip of five miles, in a straight one, from the sage-brush.

My inexplicable bone turned out to be the base of a horn of one side of the posterior angle of the cranium, showing that this animal possessed three pairs of horns, two of which rose upward and backward, with a slight divergence, one projecting forward over each eye, and a pair of flat prominences overhanging the sides of the base of the elongated snout. Picture, then, to yourselves a narrow head, extending obliquely downward, presenting its eyehorns forward, terminating in a short trunk, somewhat similar to that of the elephant, with short, flat, knife-edged tusks curving backward, and a small under jaw; its hinder legs rising above a short neck; its body like that of an elephant, with high withers and a sloping rump, terminating in a short tail; its limbs rather shorter than those of the living elephant, but with the same short, stubby toes, and the knee below the body, as in the elephant, bear and monkey. The same ambling gait, the same huge ears, and the little twinkling eyes, all betrayed in life the elephantine kinship, while the hollow forehead and its surrounding horns, if not bearing the stamp of the elephant's wisdom, marked him as a king, and his shining weapons showed his ability to maintain the claim.

This I named the Eobasileus coruntus and seeing reason to anticipate that he represented another generic form, framed for it the new name of Loxolophadon. In size it equalled and sometimes exceeded the living Indian elephant (Elephus indicus).

Thus ends the story of the finding of the monster of Mammoth Buttes, and how, on the death of Agathamnas, the monster of the Black Butte, Eobasileus of the Mammoth Butte reigned in his stead. EDWARD D. Cope.

NOTE. It is due to our readers to say that there is a dispute in regard to the priority of discovery of this geological monster. We will make a brief statement of the opposing claims in our next number.-EDITOR.

THE CONQUEST OF SPAIN BY THE ARAB-MOORS.

XI. THE RISING OF THE CHRISTIANS IN THE ASTURIAS.

T was necessary that we should accompany the Arab-Moors in

final check in the plains of Touraine. The attempt was an episyllogism, which proved to be a non sequitur. We may now return with them to Spain, where there was already more than enough work to occupy them in consolidating and preserving what they had already acquired. All hope of further northern conquest was at an end.

It would be the difficult duty of the historian who would desire to dwell at length and in detail upon the events of this period to consider, pari passu, three distinct histories, each containing its. own problem, and yet all so connected and related that no single one can be understood without a knowledge of the other two:

Ist. The condition and authority of the khalifate in Syria, the heart of the Mohammedan power, especially in its relations to Spain.

2d. The state of affairs in the Amirate of Spain, nominally dependent upon the khalif, but virtually so removed from his power that his thunders were scarcely heard and not at all heeded.

3d. The little band of Goths, in the Asturian mountains, hardy, hopeful and patient, ready to seize every opportunity to recover their independence and extend their territory.

Each of these parties was opposed to and by the other two. The khalifs, it may be supposed, still desired the annihilation of the Christian Goths, but they found themselves now more concerned to punish, and thus to strengthen, the slack allegiance of their Ameers in Spain. The Ameers were as eager on the one hand to overthrow the remaining Goths, but were equally determined on the other to rule by their own authority, regardless alike of the khalif and of the Wali of Africa, andthe impending change of dynasty at Damascus made their plans the more feasible. Coincident with these conditions, a good angel seemed to hover

1As a measure of precaution and security, Spain had been constituted a province of Africa, and was under its Wali.

over the little handful of Spanish Goths, and to promise them not only protection, but successful progress. Let us proceed to consider these constituents in the inverse order.

FIRST, OF THE RISING OF THE CHRISTIANS IN THE ASTURIAS.

To the question, "Had Spain really expired as a nation?" the Spanish historian is proud to be able to reply, "No, she still lived, although destitute and poor, in a narrow corner of what had been a vast and powerful kingdom."1

The Spanish Goths, with the simple instinct of self-preservation, had scattered before the fiery march of the Moslemah, after the first fatal battle in the plains of Sidonia. Some had passed the Pyrenees to join their kinsmen in Septimania; others had hidden in the mountain valleys of the Pyrenees, while a considerable number had congregated in the intricate territory of the Asturias, along the Cantabrian mountains and in Galicia, where strength of position made some amends for lack of numbers and organization, and where they could find rest and time for consultation as to the best manner of making head against the enemy. They were, indeed, a motley crowd. All ranks and all stations. were represented-bishops, priests, monks, husbandmen, artisans and soldiers, men, women and children, climbing like shipwrecked mariners upon a steep coast rock to be out of reach of the devastating flood.

It was, indeed, a sad outlook. The women of Spain were at the mercy of the conquerors as slaves and favorites; the men were under a grinding tribute; the children were subjected to the insidious snares of all-conquering Islam; the shrines were profaned; the Christian churches were, many of them, beaten down or burnt, or, worse still, turned into Mohammedan mosques-the images destroyed, and the ornaments and treasures carried away as spoils of war. To assert the Spanish independence, to stay the Moorish advance and to repair these evils, constituted the work of the Spanish Goths, now huddled into a little corner at the north-west.

Such was the condition of things immediately after the con

1 Habia muerto la Espana como nacion? No: aun vivia; aunque desvalida y pobre, en un estrecho rincon de este poco hà tan vasto y poderoso reinno.La Fuente, III., 57–58.