Winging his way over northern Africa, Perseus came to the mountain on which the Titan Atlas sat, hunched up on a peak with his shoulders sagging under the weight of the heavens. Somewhat weary after his long flight, the youth landed in the Garden of the Hesperides, which lay at the foot of the mountain, and watched the maidens, daughters of Hesperus, the silver Evening Star, as they danced around a shining tree of golden apples. But he dared not touch or even go near the apples, for around the trunk was coiled old Laden, a monstrous dragon whose watchful eyes were never closed. He then climbed up to the top of the mountain to talk to Atlas, but Atlas did not receive him hospitably for an oracle had declared that the day would come when a son of Jupiter would take his golden fruit, and he had therefore forbidden strangers to come into his land. Perseus begged for just one night of rest, but Atlas roared in anger and would not even listen to him. "Have a rest yourself, then!" shouted our hero, and held up the Gorgon's head. The great giant gave one startled look, which was plenty, for the features of his face grew stiff as weather-beaten ledges, his bones congealed like a mass of Tock, and his beard stuck out like a forest of naked trees! Perseus hurriedly swung the head behind him and, a trifle panic-stricken perhaps, flew away over the African desert with the blood falling drip, drip, drip on the hot, gray sands. "The gory drops distilled, as swift he flew, And from each drop envenomed serpents grew." Thus from this monster Nature produced the first snakes, which bred and multiplied on the desert until the region was infested with the miserable creatures. The great dark splash which the sea had caught when first he rose in the air after beheading the Gorgon, had formed the silvery winged Pegasus, the world's first horse. This splendid animal, however, did not stay with Perseus, but spread its beautiful feathered wings in the air and flew directly to Greece, where it was presented to the Muses on Mount Helicon and afterwards given a constellation.