Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/101

An Afterglow Chronicle of the Flowers continued.—

As Mr. Lampland and I continued our walk this morning we suddenly, within a foot, came upon a huge snake which at first we doubted to be a rattler. He coiled and hissed. We killed him with stones and brought him home still moving. He measured five feet two inches and is now in a large jar, as sarcophagus, for preservation. He was, we think, a bull-snake. He was lying nearly at length on the mesa just this side of the sumach patch above Wolf Ravine. 77