Wise men read history for us backwards from the records left by ruins. Why not do the same here with this vast City of the Prairie-Dogs that continues to right and left of us, miles after miles? Once upon a time, then, there was a powerful nation of prairie-dogs in this place, and they became, in process of years, debauched by luxury, and weakened by pride. So they placed the government in the hands of the owls, whom they invited to come and live with them, and gave over the protection of the country to the rattlesnakes, whom they maintained as janissaries. But the owls and the rattlesnakes, finding all the power in their own hands, and seeing that the prairie-dogs had grown idle and fat and careless, conspired together to overthrow their masters. Now there lived near them, but in subjection to the prairie-dogs, a race of ground-squirrels, a hard-working, thick-skinned, bushy-tailed folk; and the owls and the rattlesnakes made overtures to the ground squirrels, and one morning, when the prairie-dogs were out feeding and gambolling in the meadows, the conspirators rushed to arms, and while the rattlesnakes and the ground-squirrels, their accomplices, seized possession of the vacated city, the owls attacked the prairie-dogs with their beaks and wings. And the end of it was disaster, utter and terrible; and the prairie-dogs fled across the plains into the woodland for shelter, but did not stay there, but passed on, in one desolating exodus, to the foot-hills beyond the woodland. And then the owls and the rattlesnakes and the ground-squirrels divided the deserted city among them. And to this day the ground-squirrels pay a tribute of their young to the owls and the rattlesnakes, as the price of possession and of their protection. But they are always afraid that the prairie-dogs may come back again some day (as the Mormons are going back to Jackson County, Missouri), to claim their old homesteads; and so, whenever the ground-squirrels go out to feed and gambol in the meadows, the rattlesnakes remain at the bottom of the holes, and the owls sit on sentry duty at the top. Isn't that as good as any other conjectural history?