ce, and partly because at
every second step one or other of our professors would fall, with a cry
of wonder, before some flower or insect which presented him with a new
type. We may have traveled two or three miles in all, keeping to the
right of the line of the stream, when we came upon a considerable
opening in the trees. A belt of brushwood led up to a tangle of
rocks--the whole plateau was strewn with boulders. We were walking
slowly towards these rocks, among bushes which reached over our waists,
when we became aware of a strange low gabbling and whistling sound,
which filled the air with a constant clamor and appeared to come from
some spot immediately before us. Lord John held up his hand as a
signal for us to stop, and he made his way swiftly, stooping and
running, to the line of rocks. We saw him peep over them and give a
gesture of amazement. Then he stood staring as if forgetting us, so
utterly entranced was he by what he saw. Finally he waved us to come
on, holding up his hand as a signal for caution. His whole bearing
made me feel that something wonderful but dangerous lay before us.

Creeping to his side, we looked over the rocks. The place into which
we gazed was a pit, and may, in the early days, have been one of the
smaller volcanic blow-holes of the plateau. It was bowl-shaped and at
the bottom, some hundreds of yards from where we lay, were pools of
green-scummed, stagnant water, fringed with bullrushes. It was a weird
place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the
Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls.
There were hundreds of them congregated within view. All the bottom
area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with
hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs. From
this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking
clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor
which turned us sick. But above, perched each upon its own stone,
tall, gray, and withered, more like dead and dried specimens than
actual living creatures, sat the horrible males, absolutely motionless
save for the rolling of their red eyes or an occasional snap of their
rat-trap beaks as a dragon-fly went past them. Their huge, membranous
wings were closed by folding their fore-arms, so that they sat like
gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with
their ferocious heads protrud