is a regular giants'
cemetery."

CHAPTER XXVI.

CAMPING 'MID PREHISTORIC BONES.

So strange and uncanny was the place in which our sledge party thus
unexpectedly found themselves, that Phil was for exploring it, and
attempting to determine its true character at once; but practical Serge
persuaded him to wait until they had performed their regular evening
duties, and eaten supper. "After that," he said, "we can explore all
night if we choose."

So Phil turned his attention to the dogs, which he unharnessed and fed,
while Serge prepared supper, and Jalap Coombs gathered a supply of
firewood from the bleached timber ends projecting from the bank behind
them. He tested each of these before cutting into it to make certain
that it was not a bone, quantities of which were mingled with the
timber.

The firewood that he thus collected exhibited several puzzling
peculiarities. To begin with, it was so very tough and thoroughly
lifeless that, as Jalap Coombs remarked, he didn't know but what bones
would cut just as easy. When laid on the fire it was slow to ignite, and
finally only smouldered, giving out little light, but yielding a great
heat. As Serge said, it made one of the poorest fires to see by and one
of the best to cook over that he had ever known.

Although in all their experience they had never enjoyed a more
comfortable and thoroughly protected camping-place than this one, the
lack of their usual cheerful blaze and their mysterious surroundings
created a feeling of depression that caused them to eat supper in
unusual silence. At its conclusion Serge picked up a freshly cut bit of
the wood, and, holding it in as good a light as he could get, examined
it closely.

"I never saw nor heard of any wood like this in all Alaska," he said at
length. "Do you suppose this can be part of a buried forest that grew
thousands of years ago?"

"I believe that's exactly what it is," replied Phil. "I expect it was
some awfully prehistoric forest that was blown down by a prehistoric
cyclone, and got covered with mud, somehow, and was just beginning to
turn into coal when the ice age set in. Thus it has been preserved in
cold storage ever since. It must have grown in one of the ages that one
always likes to hear of, but hates to study about, a paleozoic or
Silurian or post-tertiary, or one of those times. At any rate I expect
it was a tropical forest, for they all were in those days."

"Then like as not these here is elephan