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Show A BIG BENDER-The Alta California tells this story of the Golden State: "All the hogs and pigs in Joseph Perrin's ranch, four miles below town, went on a pig bender on Wednesday, which happened in this wise. Several casks of native wine had been placed outside of the house and facing the barn-yard, and it is supposed that some of the hogs in rubbing against one of the casks knocked out the spigot and caused the contents to run out. The ?? a pool in a depression in the ground, and around it all the hogs, little and big, about the premises, to the number of about thirty, congregated and drank their fill, and before any person about the place was aware as to what had happened, all the porkers were drunk, and going through the queerest antics imaginable. Some were frisky and full of play, others belligerent and swaggering around hunting up fights, some maundering around in an imbecilic way walking in a cork screw style and tumbling over the least obstruction that lay in their path, while several of the larger hogs, that had managed to get on the heaviest loads were drunk and incapable of motion. Those who saw this queer performance say that it was the most apt illustration of the saying ‘drunk as a hog.' that they ever witnessed, while the inebriates acted wonderfully like men in a similar state of debauch. The hogs were all ‘blind drunk' before they could drink up all the wine, and the balance of the grape juice was turned into a temperance beverage by turning a stream of water on it. The hogs were all blear eyed and stupid the next day, and from their actions seemed to say that their ‘hair pulled dreadfully.'" A REMARKABLE MOUNTAIN.-Near Beaver Lake, in the National Park of the Yellowstone, a recent party of explorers came upon a remarkable mountain of obsidian or volcanic glass which rises in columnar cliffs several hundred feet in height. It being desirable to pass that way, the party cut a road by building huge fires on the glass to heat and expand it, and then dashing the cold water of the lake against the heated surface-the sudden contraction thus produced breaking large fragments from the side of the mountain. In the grand canyon of the Gibson River the explorers also found precipices of yellow, black and banded obsidian rising hundreds of feet. The natural glass of these localities has from time immemorial been dressed by the Indians to tip their spears and arrows. |