And in the hunting seasons, Morrison and Tony manage to steal away and chase the flying caribou and deer, and more than one lordly moose has been forced to succumb to their prowess and skill.

[THE END.]

A SUBMERGED CITY.

It has happened many times in the history of the world that cities have fallen into decay, and finally disappeared so entirely that their existence has not been suspected by the ordinary traveler.

Nineveh, Babylon and Carthage are the most notable instances of the destruction due to war, pestilence and famine.  Sometimes Nature lends a hand, as in the following strange case: 

The city authorities of Rovigno, on the peninsula of Istria, in the Adriatic Sea, have discovered a little south of the peninsula the ruins of a large town at the bottom of the sea.

It has been observed for some years that fishermen’s nets were sometimes entangled in what appeared to be masses of masonry, of which fragments were brought up from the sea-bed.  A year or two ago a diver declared that he had seen walls and streets below the water.

The city authorities recently decided to investigate.  They sent down a diver who, at the depth of eighty-five feet, found himself surrounded on the bottom of the sea by ruined walls.  He says he knows they were the work of man.  He is a builder by trade, and he recognized the layers of mortar.

Continuing his explorations, he traced the line of walls, and was able to distinguish how the streets were laid out.  He did not see any doors or window openings, for they were hidden by masses of seaweed and incrustations.

He traced the masonry for a distance of one hundred feet, where he had to stop, as his diving cord did not permit him to go further.  He had proved beyond a doubt that he had found the ruins of an inhabited town, which, through some catastrophe, had been sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Some people think that they identify this lost town with the island mentioned by Pliny the Elder, under the name of Cissa, near Istria.  This island cannot be found now, and it is thought the submerged town may have been a settlement on the island that so mysteriously disappeared.

ST. NICHOLAS.

A very pretty legend from Germany tells how St. Nicholas came to be considered the patron saint of children.  One day, so the story goes, he was passing by a miserable house, when he heard the sound of weeping within.

Stepping softly to the open window, he heard a father lamenting the wretched fate to which his three lovely young daughters were doomed by poverty.  St. Nicholas’ gentle heart was touched.  He returned at night and threw in at the window three bags of gold sufficient for the dowry of the girls.  His kindness to them, and to many others equally wretched, made him regarded as the especial benefactor of children.

In Russia he is reverenced as the chief saint of the Greek Church, but in Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Austria it is as the children’s saint that he is chiefly honored.  The good Dutch burghers who founded New Amsterdam placed the little settlement under his care.  It has grown to be the great city of New York, but his name is no less honored in the splendid metropolis than in the humble Dutch town.