path: root/77814-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77814 ***




[Illustration: Ideal Picture of Belly River Series Time, by Deckert of
the American Museum of Natural History, New York.]




                           HUNTING DINOSAURS

                                  IN

                  THE BAD LANDS OF THE RED DEER RIVER
                            ALBERTA, CANADA


                              A SEQUEL TO

                      THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER

                                  BY

                         CHARLES H. STERNBERG

                            [Illustration]

                   PUBLISHED BY CHARLES H. STERNBERG
                           LAWRENCE, KANSAS
                                 1917




                        THE WORLD COMPANY PRESS
                           LAWRENCE, KANSAS




                            Copyright, 1917

                                  BY

                         CHARLES H. STERNBERG

                        _Published, March 1917_




PREFACE


My Story, “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” published by Henry Holt & Co.,
New York, 1909, met with such a splendid reception that I am tempted
to write a second volume, especially as I have since that publication
with my three sons met with the most wonderful success among the
dinosaurs of the Red Deer river, Alberta, Canada. Since 1912 we have
been in the employment of the Geological Survey of Canada, collecting
five car loads of the ancient inhabitants of Alberta. We have found
many new genera of the duck-billed dinosaurs, those wonderful swimmers
of the old lakes and bayous of the Cretaceous period, three new genera
of horned dinosaurs, learning more about them than was ever known
before, finding that instead of being covered with bony plates as has
been supposed they had thin skins with small scales like mosaic-work;
then, stranger still, the huge plated dinosaurs completely enveloped
in an armor of bony plates, some large, and others small like chained
armor, allowing motion to the body. In fact, we are building up a great
exhibit of these strange creatures of the past. I propose to write
in the same strain as in my other book, but will take my readers to
entirely new scenes; to the richest Cretaceous fossil field in the
world; will tell of our adventures and strenuous labor in the great
gorge of the Red Deer river, 500 feet deep, and many miles in length;
of the entire process of collecting, learned by experience through so
many years of ceaseless effort; also the work of preparation in our
laboratory. In 1917 it will be fifty years since I began collecting
fossils, the rich results of the past few years are due to the
splendid work done by my three sons of whom I am justly proud, and the
assistance rendered me by the Geological Survey who have honored every
requisition I have made upon them and the results have been far beyond
my wildest dreams. No other Museum in the world, except the American
in New York, can show such collections as we have made in the last few
years. I would like to tell you the whole story. Those of you who have
read my other volume and have sent me notes of appreciation I would
like to tell you of how much assistance they have been to me, giving me
fresh courage when I have been nearly discouraged. I will illustrate
the new book with fifty original photographs showing the fossil beds,
the skeletons, or huge heads in the rock, the manner of collecting, the
work of preparation in the laboratory, and the finished specimen ready
for exhibition. We have already mounted the first duck-billed dinosaur
in Canada, it is thirty-two feet long. We secured eight skeletons of a
new form with a hooded head.

                                                      Faithfully yours,
                                                  CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
  _Lawrence, Kansas._




ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


I wish to acknowledge the great kindness of Dr. L. Hussakof, at that
time Curator of Reptiles in the American Museum of Natural History, New
York for reading and correcting the first ten chapters of this book,
and for his many kind words and deeds. When I offered to pay for the
trouble he wrote me “all the pleasure of being helpful in an unselfish
way would be gone if I received pay.” Dr. W. D. Matthews, Curator of
Vertebrates in the same Museum also encouraged me greatly by hoping I
would publish my ideal picture of “Ancient Giants” after reading the
chapter I sent him under that title. All the rest I am responsible for,
as I have had no assistance, and if I have published any thing that
does not please my reader I hope they will overlook it.

How can I thank the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and
Deputy Minister, Mr. R. G. McConnell, who has allowed me to use the
photographs taken by my sons George and Charlie, to illustrate my
pages. The text would have been dull indeed without them. Neither
can I express my thanks for his unfailing kindness to me while I was
under his authority as a member of the Survey. All the photographs
(except the Front Piece Figures 1, 2, and 3, which were sent to me
by my old friend, Dr. Osborn, President of the American Museum of
Natural History, New York. The picture of a _Portheus_, from the
London Illustrated News, the Figure of a _Tylosaur_ by my son George
F. Sternberg. The restoration of _Diplodocus carnegii_ by Mr. C. W.
Gilmore of the U. S. National Museum, and the figures 43, 44, and 45
taken last year by my son Levi) belong to the Survey. Mr. Clark in
charge of the Division of Photography developed the photographs, and
the Terre Haute Engraving Co. made the halftones. Neither can I forget
the unvarying kindness of the former Deputy Minister, Dr. R. W. Brock
who first employed me. For the great assistance he rendered me in
field and shop. For his earnest assistance to help me build up a great
collection of the Extinct Animals of Canada, at the Victoria Memorial
Museum at Ottawa, Ontario. I hope these gentlemen and all others who
have helped me to that end, will feel themselves included in this
letter of thanks.

                                                      Faithfully yours,
                                                  CHARLES H. STERNBERG.




CONTENTS


     I. STORY OF A MONSTER FISH                      1

    II. THE TEEMING EAST                            16

   III. IN THE EDMONTON BEDS OF THE CRETACEOUS      33

    IV. WE EXPLORE DEAD LODGE CANYON                49

     V. HUNTING HORNED DINOSAURS                    78

    VI. PLATED DINOSAURS                            90

   VII. THE GREAT SPIKED DINOSAUR                  101

  VIII. A TRIP TO THE JUDITH RIVER                 110

    IX. ANOTHER STRANGE DINOSAUR                   120

     X. IN THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY                  127

    XI. THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS            134

   XII. WHAT THE CRETACEOUS SEAS BROUGHT FORTH     156

  XIII. THE WONDERS OF THE PERMIAN                 180

   XIV. CONCLUSION                                 200

  INDEX                                            225




ILLUSTRATIONS

_Front._ Ideal Picture of Belly River Series Time by Deckert, of the
         American Museum of Natural History, New York.

  Fig. 1. “Dinosaur Mummy” found by George
  F. Sternberg                                                 4

  Fig. 2. “Here the skin is preserved with its complex
  arrangement of minute scales”                                5

  Fig. 3. In 1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered
  this magnificent Triceratops                                 8

  Fig. 4. Portheus molossus, Cope                              9

  Fig. 5. Another skeleton George found, to add to
  the trophies of his hunt                                     9

  Fig. 6. Mr. C. W. Gilmore’s wax figure of his
  ideal _Diplodocus carnegii_                                 20

  Fig. 7. A huge _Titanotherium_                              21

  Fig. 8. _Trachodon annectens_, Marsh                        26

  Fig. 9. Traveling on Red Deer River, Alberta                27

  Fig. 10. Steveville at the mouth of Berry Creek,
  Alberta                                                     48

  Fig. 11. Charlie’s carnivore as he found it                 49

  Fig. 12. Preparing Charlie’s Carnivore                      52

  Fig. 13. Loading Carnivore with triplex tackle              53

  Fig. 14. Quarry after Carnivore was removed                 56

  Fig. 15. Sternberg’s camp three miles below Steveville,
  Alberta                                                     57

  Fig. 16. Skeleton of Lambe’s _Stephanosaurus_               66

  Fig. 17. Sections of _Stephanosaurus_ skeleton              67

  Fig. 18. “I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges”           70

  Fig. 19. Pillars cut from the solid rock                    71

  Fig. 20. Outlying Butte over 300 feet high                  76

  Fig. 21. Levi founded a crested dinosaur                    77

  Fig. 22. Excavation after taking out Charlie’s
  _Stephanosaurus_                                            82

  Fig. 23. Charlie’s new _Trachodon_                          83

  Fig. 24. Prepared skull of _Gryposaurus_, Lambe,
  _Kritosaurus_, Brown                                        88

  Fig. 25. The strata of clay thins out to nothing            89

  Fig. 26. Discovery of George’s _Chasmosaurus_,
  (_Ceratops_)                                                94

  Fig. 27. George’s _Chasmosaurus_, lying in quarry           95

  Fig. 28. Levi wrapping _Chasmosaurus_                      100

  Fig. 29. _Chasmosaurus_ Quarry                             101

  Fig. 30. George preparing his _Chasmosaurus_               104

  Fig. 31. Skull of _Chasmosaurus_ restored by Weber         105

  Fig. 32. Sternberg’s camp three miles below “Happy
  Jack Ferry”                                                108

  Fig. 33. _Styracosaurus_ in the bottom of gorge            109

  Fig. 34. Top view of _Styracosaurus_, prepared by C.
  H. Sternberg                                               112

  Fig. 35. Charlie’s _Centrosaurus_ in the rock              113

  Fig. 36. Putting Irons on crest of _Centrosaurus_          120

  Fig. 37. George at work on C. H. Sternberg’s
  _Centrosaurus_, (_Monoclonius_)                            121

  Fig. 38. _Centrosaurus_, discovered by Charles H.
  Sternberg                                                  130

  Fig. 39. Limb of _Gorgosaurus_, mounted by C. M.
  Sternberg                                                  131

  Fig. 40. Quarry of George’s Plated Dinosaur                140

  Fig. 41. Packing up a Loveland Ferry 1915                  141

  Fig. 42. Badlands of the Red Deer River below
  Steveville                                                 150

  Fig. 43. Badlands near Steveville. Photograph by
  Levi Sternberg                                             151

  Fig. 44. Badlands near Steveville. Notice cross
  bedding                                                    160

  Fig. 45. Quarry with skeleton of _Corythosaurus_
  lost at sea 1916                                           161

  Fig. 46. Charlie letting his plated dinosaur down
  150 feet                                                   170

  Fig. 47. Hauling out fossil                                171

  Fig. 48. Urn-like Mass of Rock                             180

  Fig. 49. Egyptian Sphynx-like rock                         181

  Fig. 50. Dog Cr. Montana. Notice effects of vulcanism      190

  Fig. 51. Badlands near Cow Island, Montana                 191

  Fig. 52. Badlands of the Missouri River                    200




CHAPTER I

STORY OF A MONSTER FISH


When I wrote the preface to “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” I little
thought of the wonderful discoveries and remarkable changes that
awaited me during the seven years that were to follow. Now, in a
reminiscent mood, I sit down to tell the readers of my autobiography,
the story of the last seven years spent in the fossil fields, or in the
laboratory preparing for study, the material that I have collected.

Two seasons my sons and I collected in the Kansas Chalk, the Lance Beds
of the old Converse County that is now named Niobrara County, Wyoming,
and in the Oligocene, of the same County. Strange to say, however,
five years have been spent in the Dominion of Canada, where, with the
assistance of my three sons, I helped build up a great collection of
the Dinosaurs of the Red Deer River, Alberta, under the direction of
the Geological Survey of Canada. The present year of 1916, with the
help of my youngest son Levi, I have been engaged in the same service
for the British Museum of Natural History. As my readers will bear
witness, in the past, I have seen my choicest treasures for forty years
leave my hands forever, to add to the glories of museums I shall in all
probability never see. When the opportunity came, however, so suddenly
and unexpectedly--the opportunity of a life time--to crown my last
days with a monument that only time’s ravages or the vandal hand of
man can efface, in that growing Dominion of the North that promises to
be one of the great countries in the boundless Western Hemisphere, it
seemed to me like a call from heaven. Though the ties of a lifetime,
nearly, that bound me to many a dear friend at Lawrence, Kansas, must
be severed. Though I must leave the protecting folds of my father’s
flag and mine, and I must live under a flag that has waved a thousand
years--under a Monarch, in fact--I, a republican of republicans! Think
of it! After three years residence in the beautiful city of Ottawa, the
capital of all the broad expanse North of the international line, after
four seasons of work among buried dinosaurs and three winters spent in
the laboratory of the Victoria Memorial Museum of Ottawa, I am free to
confess I would not have known so far as personal liberty is concerned
that I was all this time in the employ of his Royal Majesty George
the Fifth of England and ruler of the British Empire. I have learned,
I believe, that a man is as much a man amidst the snows of the Lady
of the North, under the Union Jack, as under my own beloved Stars and
Stripes. Our hopes, our ideals, our aims are much the same.

I will hurry over the first two years spent in the fossil fields of
the United States after Henry Holt and Company published “The Life
of a Fossil Hunter.” In 1910 we went to Wyoming. On Schneider Creek
my second son, Charles M., made the discovery of the most remarkable
duck-billed dinosaur the world has ever seen. The _Trachodon_ I
described in the last Chapter of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter” was the
best one that had been discovered up to that time. Professor R. S. Lull
of Yale University in speaking of the specimen George F. Sternberg had
found in 1908 says in his paper, “On Ten Years Progress in Dinosaurs,”
page 210 Proceedings of the Paleontological Society, 1912: “Impressions
of the skin of this animal (_Trachodon_ or duck-billed dinosaur), were
already known from material in Washington, and from the fragment of a
tail collected by Barnum Brown. It remained for the veteran collector
Charles H. Sternberg however, in 1908, in Converse County, to bring
to light by the aid of his three sons the most marvelously preserved
dinosaur known to (Fig. 1) science. Here the skin is preserved with
its complex arrangement of minute scales (Fig. 2) entirely bereft of
defensive armor. Together with portions of the muscles, as well as the
entire skeleton, with the exception of the hind feet and tail. This
specimen was purchased of Mr. Sternberg by the American Museum and is
now on exhibition.”

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--DINOSAUR “MUMMY.” Found by George F. Sternberg.
Page 3.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Here the skin is preserved with its complex
arrangement of minute scales. Page 3, 25.]

In 1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered the magnificent skull of a
_Triceratops_, also sold to the American Museum, and mounted there.
This is the best skull of this species known, with the notable
exception of the Utterback specimen at Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.
Charlie’s specimen was found on Seven Mile creek, two and a half miles
northeast of the McKeon Sheep Ranch. The skull was over five feet long.
The horns 33½ inches in length. The crest itself on weathering out was
badly shattered, the fragments having fallen from a perpendicular cliff
into a sandy ravine and becoming buried in the sand. Though we spent
much time in sifting the sand through our fingers, Dr. Osborn sent us
back the next year, when George and Levi Sternberg sifted tons of sand
and secured enough additional fragments to enable the preparators at
the American Museum to mount the skull in fine condition as is shown in
photograph reproduced here. (Fig. 3.)

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered the
magnificent skull of _Triceratops_ photographed by Anderson. Page 4.]

In 1910 Charlie was again remarkably successful. He found near the
head of South Schneider Creek, a finer specimen even than the famous
one mentioned by Professor Lull. How he found the specimen is well
worth the telling. He discovered a large part of the tail sticking out
of a rounded mass of sandstone; another section was in the ditch below.
I was at the time camped on the other side of the Cheyenne River, and
it took me nearly all day to return with Charlie who came after me in
our one horse buggy. It was a bitter cold evening when we reached the
locality, and in order to sleep, we built a big fire of dead cottonwood
limbs, and when we were ready to leave the fire for bed, we raked off
the coals and rolled out our bed on the warm earth beneath. We were
under a sheltering bank that protected us from the wind. The next day
the wind again blew a gale, and we stood on the bluff and swung our
picks all day in our effort to get down to the floor on which the
skeleton lay stretched out at full length. Our eyes were soon filled
with the sand we loosened with our picks; but our enthusiasm knew no
bounds, and that evening, I believe, the other boys, George and Levi
arrived with the outfit, pitched a tent and cooked us a good meal under
cover. It was a big undertaking however, to get that dinosaur out of
the quarry and haul it to the railway at Edgemont, South Dakota, 75
miles away. It took us two months and a half of tireless effort. The
skeleton had evidently sunk after death in quick sand, since the front
limbs were lifted up along the sides of the body and reversed, showing
the perfectly preserved webs that covered them. The head, and the neck
were stretched to their full length, while the hind feet pointed
downward. The animal lay on the ventral surface with the abdominal
wall spread out. The skull was four feet long. Trunk and head 12 feet
and 2 inches and the tail 5 feet and 6 inches. The entire body was
covered with skin, not clinging to the bones as in the American Museum
specimen George found in 1908, but covered as if with round muscles,
the sand having taken the place occupied by the original flesh. Owing
to the great size of the specimen, and as I was determined to save
every particle of the skin, the sections we took up were very heavy,
especially those composing the trunk, one of which weighed about 3,500
pounds. It took considerable skill and the combined strength of the
four of us to handle these huge masses of rock and bone, especially as
we had no tackle. We learned, however, that with a couple of cottonwood
poles for levers and blocks of the same for fulcrums, we could hoist a
section up, and then while the boys held it a few inches above ground
I would shovel sand under it and tamp it with my shovel handle. Of
course when they loosened their hold to take a new bite, it sank deeply
into the sand again, but still we found we had gained an inch or two.
Working thus all day we not only raised a section weighing 3,500 pounds
four feet in the air, but moved it several feet to one side so we could
run the wagon under it and load. I then came to the conclusion that
if four men with nothing but poles, blocks, and sand, could move and
handle such a heavy mass that the ancient Egyptians, with millions of
laborers and endless tons of sand, could with nothing more than such
simple tools have erected the pyramids.

The specimen when boxed weighed nearly 10,000 pounds. I sent it to
Dr. Dreverman of the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfort on the Main. I
shall never forget the effort I made to induce him to give up the
specimen, or take another in its stead. A day or two after I received
his acceptance of my offer, I received an offer from Dr. Brock of the
Victoria Memorial Museum. He wished me to mount the specimen in Ottawa,
and offered me double the price I was to receive from Senckenberg for
the unmounted specimen. But it crossed the Atlantic. The last message I
had of it, before this awful war cut off all communications, was that
the head had been prepared and it was the best of which there was any
record.

These two specimens which my party of three sons and my self have added
to science, prove conclusively that the duck-billed saurians were
great swimmers. My readers will remember that I was coming to this
view slowly. In describing the splendid specimen George had found in
1908, on page 276 of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” I said “I have no
doubt that the animal with lungs expanded to their full capacity often
swam across streams of water.” I was reluctantly giving up Marsh’s and
Cope’s ideas; they believed these dinosaurs lived on land, feeding off
the tender foliage of trees; and I remarked, “The animal could use the
front limbs as clumsy hands to hold down branches of trees from which
to crop the tender foliage, or banners of moss.” When I wrote those
lines I had but a single specimen to draw my conclusions from, and even
this not yet prepared, and I had little knowledge of its habitat.

Now after eight years in the cemeteries of the duck-billed dinosaurs,
with the discovery by my party of several new genera, as well as a
careful study of their environment: as recorded in the rocks in which
they lie buried, and eight months each year in the laboratory cleaning,
mending, preparing and mounting them--my vision has broadened; I have
indeed been forced by incontestible evidence to give up my old ideas
in regard to their habits and surroundings. In fact Paleontology, like
all human science--or rather scientific theories, for the actual facts
of science never change--progresses. Evidence to prove certain views
seemed conclusive to the old paleontologist; but better collections,
trained students and further knowledge prove these views inadequate
today. Entirely different views are held now, as in the case of the
duck-bills, for instance. These lived in the water instead of on land,
and consequently they had thin skin and strong paddles, or rather
webbed feet.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--I discovered five skeletons of the tarpon-like
fish, _Portheus molossus_, _Cope_. Page 4.]

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Another skeleton George found to add to the
trophies after big game. Page 13.]

I also discovered a wonderful deposit of figs a few rods from the
_Trachodon_ quarry. They fell in sand among teeth and bones of reptiles
and fishes, as well as the impressions of rushes and other aquatic
plants, and shell fishes. The sand packed solidly around them, and
when they decayed their form was firmly molded in the sand. The cavity
thus formed was filled with sand, and an exact cast of the figs was
produced. Until then, less than a dozen fossil figs were known to me. I
also discovered five beautiful palmetto palm leaves 18 inches in width,
showing that the country at the time they grew was like the everglades
of Florida, ridges between great marshes, through the center of which
ran sluggish streams almost at a level with the near by ocean. The
water was beyond tidewater, however, it was sweet.

In 1910 I found three _Triceratops_ skulls and George one. Two of them
went to the Senckenberg Museum to make a couple of mounted skulls for
exhibition. We also secured much _Trachodon_ material in addition to
that already mentioned, a large part of a skeleton going to the British
Museum of Natural History. George also found the most perfect specimen
of a _Trachodon_ tail I had seen up to that time. I sent it to Dr.
Marcelin Boule for the Paris Museum of Natural History.

During the winter of 1911 we were preparing a huge skull, some seven
feet long, of _Triceratops_ for the Victoria Memorial Museum. Later,
in the spring I was away, and Charlie was at work on it. One evening
he had left the shop to go home when a Kansas cyclone struck the
building and shoved one of the brick walls in as easily as if the
building had been a house of cards. The weight of the brick falling on
the skull not only crushed it so badly that it could not be restored
and had to be thrown away, but it drove the heavy tailor’s table it
was on through the floor. Mr. Constant the owner of the building saw
the storm coming and ran upstairs to shut the west window. But before
he could reach it the wall fell in and he had to run for his life up
the falling floor, and fortunately reached the steps and got out of
the building safely. Though the loss of so valuable a specimen that
had cost me much time and labor was bitter indeed, the thought that my
son had so narrowly escaped with his life made me more reconciled to
the loss. I have, as already related, both seen, and been in cyclones,
but this was the first one that ever destroyed such a valuable fossil
for me. In the same building, but farther towards the east, we had a
great fish (_Portheus_), skeleton 14 feet long. But when the floor from
above fell in, the rafters covered it in such a way that it was not
injured, and though covered with lath and plaster, it came out without
a scratch, and is now mounted in the Victoria Memorial Museum. Our
camp was visited by George’s wife and babies in 1910. We were camped
on the Cheyenne River, and it was a great comfort and pleasure to
have a woman in camp, and we soon noticed a change in the culinary
department. It seemed like home to have a daughter and grandchildren
in this desert land, and when we came in from a hard day’s work in the
fossil beds they helped make us forget our labor and our care. These
records of work in the Laramie, or rather as they are now called, the
Lance beds (from Lance Creek in the immediate vicinity), show plainly
that persistent, untiring efforts in a field (that was supposed to be
exhausted by other explorers), by trained collectors, will meet with
good results. Thirteen _Triceratops_ skulls, I believe, were recorded
by Hatcher, who with others spent years here. We not only secured six
_Triceratops_ skulls, but, what was worth far more, the nearly entire
skeletons of two trachodonts wrapped in their skins, giving science an
entirely new conception of these dinosaurs.

In 1911, I sent George to western Kansas with a party to collect in
the Chalk and with wonderful results; for though I had secured four
skeletons of the famous Tarpon-like fish of the Cretaceous, named
_Portheus molossus_ by Cope, he succeeded in finding the most complete
skeleton known to science, now mounted in the British Museum of
Natural History, in London. Mr. Pycraft, has pictured it in the London
Illustrated News for March 1, 1913. “The giant to which I refer now”
(he says), “has been dead a very long while, a million years or so
[over 5,000,000 C. H. S.]. It remains in a most extraordinary state
of preservation--will be found in the Geological Gallery. Measuring
just fourteen feet in length, it must have weighed between four and
five hundred pounds [a thousand likely C. H. S.]. It was obtained
from the chalk of Kansas, and has quite a remarkable history. It was
found by Professor Sternberg who has achieved a world-wide fame for
his discovery of fossil fish and his quite amazing skill in digging
his finds from the rock in which they are embedded. The specimen was
found [by George F. Sternberg], exposed at the surface of the ground,
and was much the worse for wear-and-tear of wind and rain and sun. But
Professor Sternberg was equal to the occasion. For just as there are
two sides to every question, so there are two sides to every fossil.
The resourceful discoverer determined to get at the other side of this
very stale fish; for the exposed side was useless. Accordingly he
covered it with a thick layer of plaster-of-Paris and when this was
set he proceeded to dig out the fossil from the bed of chalk. This
accomplished, he cut away the rock from the specimen, and eventually
succeeded in exposing the whole fish.” [The underside at least C. H.
S.] (Fig. 4.)

I have quoted Mr. Pycraft at length as he has given the facts about as
they occurred except only in giving me, instead of my son credit for
the discovery. Why did this monster fish whose remains are not only
abundant in the thousand feet of Kansas Chalk, but fragments of whose
skeletons have been found in many parts of the world become extinct?
From my long experience in the fossil beds I most surely believe that
he had his day and disappeared, as has the Moa, and Great Auk, and
many other species. I have collected redwood leaves and cones from the
Dakota Group, Cretaceous, in Kansas, and in the Upper Cretaceous of
Alberta, and Wyoming. Now however they range over a small territory
along the Coast Range of California, and their days are numbered.

Animals come on the stage of life, exist for a greater or lesser period
as it may happen, and then disappear; and the old saw “that every dog
has his day” is literally true of the past as of the present. Another
fine skeleton George found, to add to the trophies of his hunt after
big game, was a beautiful little _Tylosaur_, or ram-nosed mosasaur. It
was twelve feet long only, but was very complete indeed. This also went
to Senckenberg Museum. (Fig. 5.)

In 1911, a young man I had employed, Mr. Jasperson of Lawrence,
Kansas, found a fine skull of a _Triceratops_. Charlie prepared it in
the same region since he had taken a homestead for a ranch, married,
built himself a house, and spent the winter there, not only preparing
the skull for the Paris Museum, but in cleaning the bones of a great
_Titanotherium_, I had discovered near Seaman’s Old Ranch in the Seaman
Hills. The fall of the same year, my sons, Charlie and Levi, and I with
our assistant Mr. Jasperson, explored a new region in the Oligocene,
on Plum Creek, 25 miles North East of Lusk, Wyoming, Niobrara County,
a few miles south of the Lance Creek beds. We found an old river bed
with its flood plain exposed on either side. It was wonderful indeed
to gaze on the dry bed, that had been cemented together into solid
conglomerate, of gravel sand, water-worn fossil wood and bones, while
the old flood plains were as real, (though solidified now), as if
they were flooded, but yesterday. This flood plain had been scarred,
however, by ravine and canyon, ridge and bluff, that had bisected and
thus exposed more of the contents than in the days high water covered
it. Scattered everywhere was the richest harvest of fossil mammals I
had ever seen, before or since. On the 11th of September, I secured
the now famous skeleton of a huge _Titanotherium_, already mentioned.
George and I mounted it the next winter in the Victoria Memorial
Museum of the Geological Survey of Canada. The first great mammal to
be mounted there. It stands 6 feet high at the hips, is 11 feet long
to drop of the tail, 4 feet wide at the hips. Over the flood plain of
the ancient river bed, that cut diagonally across the country, and in
the Seaman Hills, we secured great numbers of Oreodons, a hog-like
creature that once lived in great herds. I found myself fifty skulls,
and the boys a hundred more.

A large number of these specimens were purchased by the Survey and
are preserved in the Museum at Ottawa. The Miocene (Oligocene) beds
are extensively exposed. Sculptured by wind and sand, rain and frost,
into great square towered buttes, or oblong ones topped with a thick
rock that weathers into perpendicular escarpments 20 feet or more in
height, making very pleasing scenery. Below the hard stratum, are
several hundred feet of greyish marl, some beds with more clay than
others, which weathered into small chunks of clay, that covered the
rocks, or others again disintegrated into dust. Other strata contained
considerable fine sand, greenish in color. The lowest rocks of all,
a purplish marl, rested unconformably upon the chalk of the Niobrara
Cretaceous, filled with the typical _Ostrea congesta_, an oyster shell
no bigger than a cent piece. Some of the canyons cut deeply into the
chalk, put me in mind of those in the Kansas chalk with which I was so
familiar.




CHAPTER II

“THE TEEMING EAST”


Leaving Charlie and his wife on their ranch, Levi and I returned to
Lawrence, George and I prepared the material for sale. As I had sold a
20 foot _Platecarpus_, George had found during the summer, a 14 foot
fish, and the _Titanotherium_ skeleton to the Victoria Memorial Museum
at Ottawa with the agreement that I was to mount them, I took my son
George with me on a trip to the “Teeming East,” we left Lawrence on the
17th of March, 1912, by the Pennsylvania Route. After leaving St. Louis
we passed through the level reaches of southern Illinois, crossed the
Mississippi. The farms along the lowlands were covered with water. Farm
houses with ornamental trees around them were pleasing to look upon.
In places the land swelled into gentle curves with groves topping the
rounded elevations. The less pretentious houses occupied by renters
were sprinkled in among the nobler buildings. Snow was still lying on
the open stretches. Great wood piles attested to the fact that they had
not destroyed all the timber. Woods of black oak were still common.
Straw stacks and corn shocks were not very common, showing the silos
had gathered in all the green stuff, and the long winter had consumed
the straw. Everything available for food had been fed to the cattle.

As we go farther east we get among hills with narrow valleys, we cross
a river from the north, likely the Kaskaskia, with canal beside it, but
both are beneath a flood of water making one great stream. Everywhere
are old stump fields: showing the destruction of timber--that once
covered all the land--is still in progress. In a decade all will
disappear as there is no young timber to replace it. So man destroys
his best friends. Not a single rock did I see across Illinois. East
of Casey we passed the great oil fields of Indiana; in the field
everywhere were the silent pumps at work, attached by wire to an
engine, that drives a number at once. The oil is pumped into pipes
that in turn carry it to the great tanks many miles away. They covered
acres of ground, each tank holding many car loads of oil. At 10 a.m.
we reached Terre Haute, where I noticed a huge Court House crowned
with a high dome. The country roughens as we go eastward. There are
many fine homes with elevated water tanks too, showing that the farm
houses are provided with the modern improvements. What more can one
ask, with daily mail and telephones in every home? So we swing merrily
along through the great coal fields of Indiana. Everywhere we see the
shaft and elevator with cars loading on the tracks, there are no
storage buildings; if the miners stop work a week or more the consumer
must suffer. Here too I noticed the ruthless hand of man among the
trees. They are cut down to lie and rot on the ground. We pass through
sand hills, and belts of timber, there are more rail fences than in
Illinois, where the last ones are being cut for posts for wire fences.
They always follow the destruction of timber. At 2:30 p.m. we are in
Indianapolis. As we enter Ohio beyond Richmond, we observe the improved
condition of farm houses and barns, and we see some fine residences
of brick and wood. Even the posts along the roads are painted. They
have quantities of drainage tiles scattered around preparing to drain
off the water, as the ground is soaked from the melting snow. So we
speed along, and when we wake in the morning we find ourselves in
Pennsylvania among the Allegheny Mountains traveling down Monongahela
river, towards Pittsburgh. Towering mountains on either side the
rapid streams covered with second growth timber with but few houses.
The rocks that have been metamorphised by heat, are tipped up at all
angles, often on edge, or leaning against the mountains as if for
support. At last we reach the Smoky City, at the head of the Ohio River
a wonderfully rich city. But her millionaires never made their money
out of the ground from which they were taken, but from the bowels of
the earth. They have delved like Vulcan among the Black Diamonds,
Iron-Ore, Gas and Oil.

Here the great Steel King Carnegie has dug out his countless millions.
Every where the red furnaces belch forth smoke tinted with the glow of
the molten mass below. Sometimes gorgeous colors flare out upon the
night, or columns of smoke black as midnight ascend and belly outward.
Many smoke stacks throw out their fumes until every thing in the narrow
valley, the most expensive marble buildings, as well as the humblest
huts, are covered with an enamel of a uniform dirty color.

On the 19th of March I stood on the bridge between Carnegie’s Institute
and his Technique School, a noble bridge of cement. The Institute, or
Museum is beyond my feeble pen to describe. The entrance to the Hall of
Music on the West, is one of the noblest of human monuments; the floor
is of colored inlaid marble from the famous quarries of earth, with
great pillars of marble supporting balconies, twenty or more columns
costing $8,000 each. The balconies and walls are inlaid with gold. The
magnificent building cost 6,000,000 dollars. Every moment I could spare
was in the Paleontological Museum, among the skeletons of animals which
have disappeared from the earth of today to return no more, except as
life is breathed into the dry old bones by hunters and students, who
have given their life to their collection and study.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Mr. C. W. Gilmore’s wax figure of his ideal
_Diplodocus carnegii_, Hatcher. Page 20.]

One of the most famous and world renowned here, is Hatcher’s
_Diplodocus carnegii_. It is seventy-two feet long and stands twelve
feet high at the hips. Casts of this noble specimen have been sent
to many of the State Museums of Europe. Mr. Hatcher told me that he
received a cable from Mr. Carnegie once in England asking him what it
would cost to make a plaster restoration of this specimen. He wired
back “ten thousand dollars” and immediately received orders to go ahead
and make the restoration. This was presented to the British Museum.
But Mr. Carnegie’s liberality has known no bounds, and many of the
great museums of Europe, have received reproductions. At this writing,
however, I am glad to say that the famous collector and student,
Mr. Douglas, has discovered a still larger specimen, as I remember,
eighty-two feet in length and sixteen feet high at the hips. The last
time I was in The Carnegie Museum it was rapidly being completed for
exhibition. Hatcher’s specimen was found in Albany County, Wyoming.
One of the remarkable things about it is the long neck and tail that
lengthens out in a whip-like lash. The head itself is very small
with teeth above and below for nipping off the tender tree moss, or
other succulent herbage, on which it evidently fed. But it seems
incredible, that such a small head could feed so huge a creature. I
have always been opposed to the restoration that has been made of a
number in a swamp. When we all know that a lizard of such gigantic
proportions, would certainly sink out of sight, as some of them in
the illustrations are in the act of doing (See page 79, “The Life of a
Fossil Hunter”.) I believe the idea of Prof. Marsh that the huge body
needed the support of water to buoy it up, is untenable. If they ever
went into a body of water to bathe, there would have been a gravely
bottom, with no aquatic plants growing in it. _Brontosaurus_ is another
genus of the same family, the Thunder Lizard, of Professor Marsh, who
imagined that his tread on earth shook it, and produced a sound like
the roll of distant thunder. It has been the dream of my life to take
up some of these gigantic Jurassic Reptiles but as yet I have not had
the opportunity. Every thing in Carnegie Museum of Fossil Vertebrates
is dwarfed by the great _Dinosaur_ named after the Iron King. (Fig. 6.)

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--On the 11th of September I secured the
famous skeleton of a _Titanotherium_. Page 14.]

Another remarkable skeleton is _Morophus_, a toed ungulate about
twelve feet long, and eight feet high. It has a powerful neck, a head
resembling a horse, while the coffin bones are cleft down the center.
There is a beautiful three toed horse skeleton two feet high, and
many other splendidly mounted skeletons of the extinct animals of the
west. I was delighted to see my specimen of the great turtle, Cope’s
_Protostega gigas_, The First Great Roof, mounted here, as well as the
_Clidastes_ and a great fish I sold to Mr. Hatcher just before his
death.

But time would fail me to tell of the many delights of Pittsburgh.
I was especially interested in the Fern Tree Group from Australia.
Gigantic tree ferns they were, and it seemed to me I had gone back
millions of years, to the Tree Fern Forests of the Carboniferous.

On the 25th of March we went to Washington and were the guests of my
brother, General George M. Sternberg at 2005 Massachusetts Avenue. I
had not seen him for years.

I met for the first time Mr. C. W. Gilmour, Curator of Fossil Reptiles,
and Mr. Gidley, Curator of Fossil Mammals. In the National Museum I
went over with them the grand mounts in the Museum. Among them the
first example of a mounted skeleton of _Triceratops_. They have a
wealth of _Triceratops_ skulls and other material, collected largely by
the late Mr. J. B. Hatcher. Here also are groups of smaller dinosaurs,
and of mounted skeletons of the Duck-billed form, and many mammals. We
passed a most enjoyable time here also.

They were mounting a fine skeleton of a great Stegosaur, or Plated
Saurian, one of the most unique of the dinosaurs. The huge dermal
plates of bone that line the back bone alternately, in double rows, are
often two and a half by three feet in size, while the enormous spines
that stick out from the top surface of the tail, are, some of them,
over two feet in length. Since that enjoyable March, they have mounted
this noble dinosaur as he lay entombed in his rocky cemetery, enough
of it removed to show the bones in bold relief.

On Saturday we went to the National funeral of the sailors and
marines, who lost their lives when the Maine was blown up by out side
explosives, in 1898. This was the most remarkable spectacle I have ever
seen. I stood at the Army Building and looking up Pennsylvania Avenue
to the Capital. It was filled with marching men and the sidewalks were
crowded with people. First came a platoon of mounted police clearing
the crowded streets for the procession, consisting of troops of
Cavalry, Artillery, Infantry, of Sailors, and Marines, and the Grand
Army of the Republic. They escorted thirty-two caissons on which rested
double coffins of the martyrs of the Maine, completely hidden beneath
a wealth of flowers. Several bands played funeral marches. The great
column was reviewed by the President. A cold rain set in that lasted
all day, but the soldiers made the solemn march to Arlington through
it all, in full dress. The brilliant uniforms of the officers were
unprotected from the violent down-pour. As the procession was hours in
reaching the Cemetery, we went ahead to Arlington House, which stands
surrounded with grand old trees on an elevation overlooking Washington,
across the Potomac. It was too wet to look at the cemetery, where
thousands of the soldiers of the Union perished, that our country
should continue one and inseparable, with the foul blot of slavery
washed out in the blood of our patriots. In one tomb are the bones
of 2,000 unknown dead gathered from the battle fields, who live in
story and died that we might live and enjoy the blessings of American
Citizenship, the most prosperous nation on God’s green earth. Printed
on a white board is the poet’s tribute to the soldier dead:

  “On Fame’s eternal camping ground
  Their silent tents are spread,
  And glory guards with solemn round
  The bivouac of the dead.
  The muffled drums sad roll has beat
  The Soldier’s last tattoo,
  No more on life’s parade shall meet
  The brave the fallen few.”

They laid the Martyrs to rest, with the countless soldiers and sailors
of the great Republic dead. “Peace to their ashes.” Monday we left for
New York.

It would be useless for me to attempt to describe the wonders of the
American Museum at 77th street and Central Park West, in New York
City. There is no museum on our continent to compare with it as far
as I know, and I have visited nearly all. I have rarely been able to
spare the time to visit any part of it, except that of Vertebrate
Paleontology, neither have I time now, to describe their most noted
specimens, and since Barnum Brown has added six car loads of the wealth
of Dinosaur material, from the Edmonton and Belly River series of
the Red Deer River, Alberta, no man can measure the wonders of her
“Animals of the Past.” How grand for science, to have such a man as
Professor Osborn its President, a man who has given his life and wealth
to augment its riches from “The Story of the Past,” and those other men
like Morris Jessup, who have given their millions into the treasury.
I was proud indeed when I entered her walls to know that the nucleus
of those vast collections was the “Cope Collection,” and to remember
that I had been a contributor to that collection for seven years of
the best, if not the most fruitful years of my life. I saw here the
strange ladder-spined lizard I collected in the Permian of Texas,
part of my John Day River Collection of Oregon, etc. But what pleased
me most were the more perfect specimens of a horned and duck-billed
dinosaur from Wyoming, and the great fish _Portheus_. Here lies the
prepared specimen of George’s _Trachodon annectens_, wrapped in its
skin as in a mantle. Here, too, in the Invertebrate Department, is the
great Inoceramus shell 3′ 4″ × 3′ 7″ in size. The second shell of these
huge dimensions I sent to Tübingen University. Although they strew the
rocks of the Kansas chalk in great numbers, they are always broken into
small pieces, and these are scattered by the winds of heaven. It seems
impossible to preserve them. But George and I learned the secret, and
after finding a shell with lips or hinge exposed, we carefully removed
the loose chalk above it, then put a frame of two by four lumber around
it, in which we poured plaster. On hardening this stuck securely to the
shattered shell, holding the fragments in place. Then we dug beneath
and turned over the panel, and in the shop removed the chalk, leaving
one side of the shell exposed in the solid plaster.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--_Trachodon annectens_, Marsh. Page 45.]

[Illustration: FIG. 9--Traveling on Red Deed River, Alberta. Page 49.]

From New York I went to Yale, and met Professors Lull, Schuchert and
Weiland, and the preparator, Mr. Hugh Gibbs. What a splendid time we
had in what the oldest American Paleontologist, Prof. S. W. Williston
used to call “a Paradise of Dry Bones.” We saw the treasures Prof.
Marsh had gathered through so many years, some of them the most famous
among fossil vertebrates. Time or space would not allow me to go
deeply into the study and description of these wonders of creation.
Dr. Weiland told me that if five of the most perfect fossil turtles
were chosen from all the museums of the world, his great extinct
monster turtle, _Archelon ischyros_, from South Dakota, would rank
first, and the one I sent him from the Kansas chalk would be second
in the list. You may call it egotism, to recall these delights, but
it is the very spice of life to know that years spent in the barren
and desolate fossil fields of North America, have not been barren of
results. Please remember, if I am still collecting in the year of
grace 1917, it will mean that I have been a collector, or if you
please a Fossil Hunter for fifty years. So I should be excused, if I
bring before you the choice of the big game I have gleaned through
half a century. We visited these great museums not only for pleasure,
but to learn something about the processes of making “Open Mounts,”
for I must confess, neither George or I had ever done this kind of
work, although I had bound myself with George’s aid, to mount the
_Titanotherium_ skeleton in this way, that is, mount it free from
the rock in which it was entombed. Fortunately, the preparators told
us of many mistakes in their own mounts, and warned us not to fall
into the same pits. Unfortunately, however, they were not mounting a
titanothere at the American Museum and the one we studied was among
their first mounts, and they have been improving on it ever since. With
the maxim of the late Professor Cope ringing ever in my ears “What
man has done he can do again, and he can do a little more.” With the
little knowledge we had gained we crossed the International Line, and
found ourselves in Ottawa, Canada. We found that the great room that
was to be the exhibition room of vertebrate fossils, was filled with
boxes and barrels, and there was not a tool in sight. As I was obliged
to mount the _Titanotherium_ at my own expense, I could not afford
an elaborate machine shop. I remembered how Charlie in a little log
cabin on Old Woman Creek, Wyoming, was preparing a great skull of a
horned dinosaur. A _Triceratops_, for the Paris Museum, with little
more than a knife or two, a few chisels and brushes and sacks of
plaster, in a room that had only about two feet of extra space around
the skull. Also with similar tools, he had taken the skeleton of the
_Titanotherium_, out of the hardest kind of rock. We certainly, with
a few simple tools should be able to mount it. We did it too. We were
indeed handicapped. For an anvil we secured a disk of solid steel, a
strong vise, the necessary half oval, and round steel, and iron tubing
for supports, etc. We made a great sand-table first, and laid out on
it the skull and column to get the pose, often getting above it and
moving a bone here and there until we were satisfied. We then cut a
board so as to fit the contour of the under part of the column, as we
had arranged it on the sand-table. This board was fastened to bases
by two half round pieces of steel that were fastened to either side
of the board in pairs, one in front, and one behind. These coming
together beneath made a round rod of iron that passed into iron tubes a
little larger, and held them where we wished, with thumb screws. These
supports in turn were fastened to broad bases, so they would not fall
over. We took a cast of the under side of the centra of the vertebrae,
and covering the board that served as our model with moulding wax, we
stuck the vertebrae in on the central line, giving the exact pose the
column had on the sand-table. An iron rod was bent so as to pass down
the neural canal. The skull too, was fastened to this iron support,
which in turn was fastened to the strong supports that were to secure
the skeleton to the base. Although this is the most complete skeleton
of a _Titanotherium_ with which I am familiar, there were several
missing bones. We secured a box full of duplicate material from the
American Museum, and we succeeded in finding nearly enough to complete
some of the feet. We found however, that we had only one femur and
one radius and ulna. So we were obliged to attempt another trade with
which we were not familiar, that of modeling the missing bones in clay.
And then making a cast of them to replace the missing ones. When I
attempted to make a femur in wax using as my model the bone we already
had, I found difficulties I had not bargained for. It would have been
comparatively easy to have made a copy of the one we had, but it would
have been useless. In other words I must make one exactly the reverse
of the model, i.e., if there was a great trochanter on my model, I
must put it on the reverse side on my wax copy, or as I told George,
I must think exactly opposite to what the model was, like thinking
backward. In other words the mental picture I must follow, would be
the reverse of the femur I was looking at. It seems we both overcame
these difficulties. We made one mistake however, I have been sorry
for, and hope to rectify, and that was we followed the old mount in
the American Museum, covering the iron half ovals that were fastened
to the limb bones with plaster to give the skeleton a standing pose.
I am sure it would look better if the iron was exposed. Some time we
will rectify that error. I can never give you a pen picture of the
difficulties we met with; they were legion. We overcame them however.
Among the most important, perhaps, was the fact that we had to work
in cold iron, as we could not use a forge on the fine floor of the
Exhibition Room. If we bent the rod a little too much it would break.
Then it was very hard to give the exact shape it must have, or the
skeleton would be distorted. Any thing the least out of line, you know,
is quickly detected by the human eye, and any thing out of plum would
be an eye sore to the visitor instead of an eye opener, or educator as
we hoped. At last we got to the ribs, and we thought our worst troubles
were over. But we found they had just begun. They were badly broken,
and no cement we were familiar with, would hold them together. All the
bones we must bore into, to hold our irons in place, were as hard as
flint, it often taking three hours to bore a hole three-quarters of
an inch deep. The ribs broken into many fragments, we found must have
a hole into the end of each piece, a little rod of iron perhaps two
inches, or an inch and a half long, must have their ends flared out,
umbrella-like, to prevent coming out when the cement is set. We used a
solution of gum Arabic, and made a paste as thick as cream with dental
plaster. To prevent spoiling, we poisoned it with corrosive sublimate,
and to prevent the cement from hardening too soon, we put into each
rubber cup in which we mixed it a few drops of a thin solution of
LaPage’s glue. Please remember we did not have then, as now a fine
press drill, the best manufactured, but a breast drill. One of us would
often have to hold the rib, while the other bored a hole, and the time
it took was trying to both. The boy who turns the grindstone had a
picnic compared to us. If a mistake was made, too much force used, the
rib would be broken, and fall to the floor and break again into a dozen
pieces. So it became a byword with me, when we actually finished a rib,
and had it fast in its place, “We are one rib nearer home.” We soon
learned, that it was absolutely impossible to tell when a skeleton of
this kind could be mounted. If we dropped a rib it might take a week
to bore into the ends of the fragments and insert the small rods of
battered iron, and cement them together. But patience will always win,
no matter what the obstacle. At last our skeleton was mounted, but I
notified Dr. Brock, the Director, and Mr. Lambe the Paleontologist too
soon, forgetting the base had to be made of plaster. Just at the moment
our plaster was hardening and we needed our wits about us, we ourselves
were covered to the eyes with it, these gentlemen stepped down to view
our mount. We were kept too busy to remember the plight we were in
to entertain company. George took a picture of me, I here reproduce.
Certainly I felt proud of that first open mount we ever made, and, as
I say, the criticism that could be made, we hope to rectify if we ever
have time. (Fig. 7.)




CHAPTER III

IN THE EDMONTON BEDS OF THE CRETACEOUS


Having entered the Geological Survey of Canada, as Head Collector and
Preparator of Vertebrate Fossils with the assistance of my two sons,
Charlie and Levi, (George entered later), Westward we sped, and as
even the longest journey will end, we reached Edgemont, South Dakota,
and were driven to Charlie’s ranch. My youngest son, Levi, and A. E.
Easton, from Quinter, Kansas, joined us here. We drove in with our
outfit on the 18th of July. A neighbor hauling in to Edgemont the fine
skull of _Triceratops_ Charlie had prepared during the winter. This we
shipped to Dr. Boule for the Natural History Museum in Paris. It was
a remarkably cold day for this time of the year and the mercury hung
close to the freezing point. Loading team and outfit on the car and
leaving it in charge of Mr. Eastman, we went on ahead. I took a sleeper
on the night of the 19th, and woke next morning in the foot hills
of the Rocky Mountains--rugged indeed, showing snow in their darker
recesses. Part of the day we passed through the Crow Indian Reserve,
many of the Indians still living in tents. In the evening we reached
Great Falls. I walked across the bridge here, of several spans or a
thousand and fifty feet in length.

The river is swift and full of falls and rapids. We passed through much
country covered with the black alkaline shales of the marine Pierre
beds. Some exposed sections are at least three hundreds feet thick,
covered with a scanty growth of short grass. We passed a large lake,
miles in length, covered with wild ducks and other water fowls. No
trees grew along the shore.

We crossed the International Line at Sweet Grass and Coutts. Here we
noticed a change; the country is a rich loam thickly covered with
buffalo grass. We left Lethbridge on the 21st of July. This is a pretty
town, with a beautiful park that promises to be a beauty spot some day
in the near future. The country north is largely settled, I am told,
by farmers from the United States, and they are making the desert to
blossom as the rose. We could see the Canadian Rockies looming up in
the West.

At Calgary I stopped to have a row boat made and Charlie went on to
Acme. Calgary is the metropolis of Alberta. I noticed many comfortable
farm houses, fields of wheat, oats and flax, or herds of horses and
cattle. On my way to Acme I saw plenty of hay on the open prairie. They
speak of raising 120 bushels of oats to the acre and sixty bushels of
wheat. Certainly a farmer’s paradise. Our car arrived at last after
being eight days on the road. At Acme we got well acquainted with the
pest of the north, for myriads of mosquitoes made life a burden. We
were obliged to wear nets while traveling and to keep a smoke going
to protect ourselves and horses from their murderous attack when we
made camp. We took the road between Rosebud and Knee Hill Creek to
Drumheller, a small town at that time with a couple of stores. Ten days
after leaving Wyoming we arrived in the valley of the Red Deer River,
encamped three-quarters of a mile above Drumheller. On the 13th of
July we found our first dinosaurian bone of a trachodon or duck-billed
saurian. We soon began to find great numbers of loose bones piled up as
jetsam and flotsam of the sea. They were first carried out, by river
or lagoon, and at time of high tide were returned with dead seaweeds
of the ocean to clog the shore. The best localities we found were
above the river near the prairie level. They are usually preserved in
iron-stone concretions, or a bog iron covers the bones. They lie in
sandstone that has a yellow streak through it.

The valley of the Red Deer River at Drumheller is a great chasm cut
by the river four hundred feet deep into the heart of the prairie.
Across from plain to plain it is nearly two miles. Tributary creeks
and coulees have cut narrow trenches farther back into the plain while
in the main valley, especially near the brink of the prairie, are long
ridges, table lands, buttes and knolls, pinnacles and towers down whose
sides a rolling stone would bring up in a sudden halt in the waters
of the river three or four hundred feet below. All this region, except
of course the main channel and flood plain of the river, has been
transformed by nature’s sculpturing into fantastic badland scenery.
The rocks carved into the most intricate patterns entirely devoid of
vegetation, except perhaps, along the northern slope of some butte or
rounded bluff where sponge-moss and dwarf cedar and spruce with many
flowers, found a resting place. The slopes are usually covered with
cherty fragments that threaten to slip or roll under the feet and hurl
the adventurous fossil hunter into the gorge below. The canyons are
rich in coal, and now that the Canadian Northern Railway has terminals
at Calgary there is great demand for it.

The Edmonton beds are brackish water origin. On top is a great bed
of oyster and clam shells. Below the principle bone-beds are about
200 feet of greyish clay (that crumbles under the feet), interlaid
with dark shales and seams of coal. Many of the clay beds have hard
iron concretions scattered through them. As these are practically
indestructible they remain scattered over the surface, the other
material having been carried away by water. There is a bed of massive
sandstone within a hundred feet of the top, and it weathers out
into table lands. Below, the soft clays form conical mounds, often
capped with grey sandstone that is fluted by weathering. The rain
water becomes so thick with clay that it never settles but gradually
evaporates into mud.

I was interested in the study of two problems: First, the environments
of the duck-billed, horned and plated, and carniverous dinosaurs.
Second, the story of how this river has cut out of the heart of the
prairies, this great canyon 400 feet deep and over a mile wide. I find
in answer to the first question that the deposits were uniform through
a great length of time, showing that the climatic conditions and the
altitude were the same during the time the four hundred feet of strata
were laid down. Further, in order to retain the same conditions the
land subsided at the rate of deposition. The fine material of which
they are composed, showed it to be ocean mud, and the mud, accumulated
in lake or bayous, like the everglades of Florida. Swamps and bayous
were the natural habitat of the duck-billed dinosaurs, while on the
rising land were groves of redwood, sycamore, figs and other trees,
with low heavily grassed plains covered with high grass horse-tail,
rushes, etc., through which wandered the horned plated and carniverous
dinosaurs. How often in my day dreams some stately dinosaur has passed
before my mental vision! The forests, the rivers, the lakes and
oceans of those ancient days have appeared in imagination as though
they actually existed. So I ask the reader to put on my glasses:
A low country but little above sea-level, great flats near the sea
covered with high swamp grass, rushes and moss, through which meander
sluggish streams, lagoons, and bayous, often widening out into lakes of
considerable size, all receiving the high and low tides of the near by
ocean. On the rising land the giant redwoods cast their shadows across
the silent streams. They grow in fairy circles with the parent tree in
the center often, or in case she has dropped out, a hollow circle is
formed. Palms, sycamores, figs, magnolias and many other trees that
now adorn our forests thrived along the Cretaceous everglades. Such
an environment was the home of the ancient dinosaurs. They were the
rulers of land and water. There were many soft-shelled turtles in the
streams, as well as countless gar-pike and sturgeon. The scene was a
vast panorama of beauty. The sheen of the water, the salt-meadows of
living green, the dark forests moaning in the background, and over all,
the sun revolving on its western course. Perhaps our imagination has
carried us back to a bayou of the Edmonton Cretaceous. Yes! See yonder
the foam ripple off the huge back and tail of a swimming reptile,
a duck-billed dinosaur or trachodont! He is rapidly approaching
a specially seductive patch of horse-tail rushes just across the
bayou from us. The enormous head, over three feet in length, swings
gracefully on a long delicate curved neck, his front limbs, six feet
long, and hind ones eight. The front foot is elegantly proportioned
and a strong web stretches across the four fingers. The hind limbs are
pillar-like and terminate in three great hoofs with coarse web between
the three great toes to assist in swimming, and to prevent sinking
deeply into the mud of the bayou when he stopped to feed. The great
trunk, projecting half way above the water, and the enormous tail over
fifteen feet long. This tail he uses with great effect to hurry him to
his pasture ground. It dashes the water into foam as we have already
seen. The whole body is covered with a thin skin in which are arranged
like mosaic-work small polygonal scales or small tubercles, ornamented
with larger scales arranged in rosettes. The whole in parallel rows
glowing pattern blends harmoniously with the reeds and rushes near the
shore. See how the patches of foam rise high in the air, tinted by
the sun’s rays so they show the colors of the rainbow. Now he passes
us at full speed like a racing yacht and comes to a sudden halt, by
planting his powerful hind feet in the muddy bottom. The toes spread
out covering a square yard of mud. With his front limbs converted into
arms, he draws into his huge mouth, large mouthfuls of the luscious
forage to be sheared into shreds by his scissor-like teeth behind,
after it has been nipped off by the hard horny duck-bill in front.

There are three rows of teeth in the cutting surface and magazines
below, containing two thousand teeth in all. As fast as one tooth
is worn out it is shed and another takes its place. Further, they
are so arranged that only alternate teeth can drop out at a time.
Professor Marsh has called this giant lizard _Trachodon annectens_.
We have certainly a fine view of him. Back of the head a frill rises
gently to the shoulders. The sun light reflects from the water every
shining scale and contour of the graceful body, and exhibits the play
of the strong muscles. He is in his natural habitat and has finished
breakfast, if you please. Lifting his head he turns towards the narrow
neck of land that separates him from a bayou just beyond. He wades
through the mass of rank vegetation towards shore, and as he reaches
the muddy slope between high and low tide, he rests his front feet on
the sloping bank. Then with body raised a few feet above the mud, and
dragging his tail behind him when he reaches the fringe of bushes,
he pushes his duck-bill into them nosing around as if to scent some
danger. As the coast seems clear he hurries across the narrow strip of
land.

  The cooling touch of morning breeze
  Waft incense from a censor hidden
  The gentle sighing of trees
  Add music to the scene unbidden.

As he hies himself away “to fresh scenes and pastures green.” But hark!
a noise that thrills us, what can mean it? See! It is the tiger of the
Everglades rushing forward toward his prey. His two powerful limbs on
which his body is posed are full ten feet in length. The three toes
armed with claws of hardened horn are over ten inches long. He spans
full thirty feet in length. Small front limbs are hardly noticeable. He
drags a long tail on the ground. His long and powerful jaws are armed
with horrid teeth. Some six inches in length with double edges serrated
on their cutting surfaces. Our herbivore, knowing his weakness, rushes
frantically back towards the water, but he is unable to reach it.
His enemy is upon him and with relentless fury strikes blows at his
unprotected body, with first one, and then the other claw-armed hind
foot that tears open the tender fresh and pours a flood of life-blood
on the ground. The awful terror of the scene has rendered us speechless
with horror, coming so swiftly in the peaceful redwood forest. The sun
was not darkened, the perfume of flowers still scented the air; the
gentle breeze sighed in the branches over head. Though the victim was
a cold blooded reptile, we had become deeply interested in him and we
were unprepared for such a woodland tragedy.

Coming back to the second question that has so interested me: How has
this great canyon been cut out of the heart of the prairie through the
rocks of the Edmonton Cretaceous?

The recession of the cliffs of the main canyon and its side coulees
is very rapid. The upper beds, composed of uncemented fine sand and
clay, under the action of rain, or frost, cave off in great avalanches
of shaken up material that rapidly disintegrate and is carried off by
the rains to the Red Deer River, where the high water hurries it on to
augment the sediment accumulated by the lake or river’s mouth or Lake
Winnipeg itself.

Often acres of the margin of the prairies slide down and fill a coulee,
or drop into the river, through which a passage is rapidly cut and
the mass is shoved on by other masses behind, until it has all been
carried away. Every time it rains the fine clay and sand dissolves like
soft soap, and as mud is carried into the river. The deeper canyons
have their ridges bisected by lateral ravines until they meet and form
buttes and knolls that in turn weather into hay-stacks or sugar-loaf
mounds that are being constantly reduced by wind and rain and frost,
until now, often we find a perfect labyrinth of intricate gorges,
buttes, towers, and table lands of every conceivable form, strewn, with
traveled boulders, from the prairie above, or masses of bog iron that
have withstood the disintegrating action of the elements. But for this
constant corroding of the rocks and the consequent recession of cliffs,
we would know nothing of the wealth of extinct forms that lie here in
their last sleep. Nothing of the fauna and flora of the day when these
dry bones were full of life and vigor, when the marshes and lowlands
echoed to the formidable tread of reptiles, and the crush of mighty
carnivores rushing relentlessly on their prey.

In addition to boulders, and iron concretions, the faces of the bluffs
are covered with cherty chips that accumulate often in some shallow
wash. These slip under the feet, and made it difficult to climb the
steeper ascents. More than once I measured my full length on the steep
surface cutting face and hands by the impact. But strange to say when
it was wet, and the clay beds were as treacherous as if covered with
soft soap, where ever the cherty fragments accumulated, one could climb
on them in safety, as they were pressed into the slick clay, and held
the feet securely as if there were spikes in the shoes. On account of
these fragments I was able to travel over the beds on a wet day, and
found the best deposit we discovered of fossil bones, in the coulee
through which the Canadian Northern has its right of way, on the west
side of the Red Deer River. We made a large collection of scattered
bones here.

Near here, also, we secured a great collection of redwood leaves, and
branches with their narrow leaflets as beautifully preserved in the
flinty rock as if impressed in wax, but yesterday. The Red Letter Day
for us, however, was when Charlie found on the 13th of August, 1912,
the wonderfully complete skeleton of a duck-billed dinosaur, the first
ever mounted in Canada. It is thirty-two feet long. The end of the
tibia only was exposed, within a hundred yards of the shack of Dan
McGee, forty yards above the forks of McCheche Creek, six miles west of
Drumheller. The entire skeleton except the tail was present. Lying on
its right side, the hind limbs were doubled on themselves, the front
ones at right angles to the body, and the head bent towards the front
limbs. We got the skeleton uncovered and discovered the ribs were
expanded and in natural position. The animal lay like a dead dog; I
thought I had never seen any thing so pitiful, and forlorn.

Charlie and I mounted it the next winter, and were careful to put
a little life in the dead skeleton by straightening out the neck a
little, and giving a sense of motion as it were to the tail so that
the animal would not look as repulsive as it otherwise would to some
observers; for there is such a thing as breathing life into the
skeletons that have been buried out of sight these three million years
or more. We have mounted it then with the slight changes in the neck,
and one hind limb that otherwise would have covered important bones
in the original matrix, and in the position in which it was floated
to bank, and was covered up with mud. Even the skin impression is
preserved along the pelvis; and the rows of ossified tendons that cross
each other in three rows, like basket work, showing they were used
to bind the muscles of the back and tail together. They were likely
flexible as whale-bone in life.

The figure 8 shows the skeleton as now mounted in the Victoria Memorial
Museum, of Ottawa, Ontario. It was no easy undertaking to save and
mount this wonderfully complete skeleton; it was buried in fine sandy
clay that was cracked in all directions, as were the bones, cracked
into thousands of fragments. Only our years of experience in the field,
and my faith in the skill and patience of Charlie gave me courage to
believe that it could ever be mounted. It could never have been saved,
but for knowledge of the plaster process of collecting.

I will try and give my readers the process by which we not only kept
the bones (broken into countless fragments and ready to fall into
powder), in their places, but saved the shattered matrix in which they
were embedded. My whole party worked in what I call for a better term
“a quarry.” The first thing to do was to remove with pick and shovel
the loose sand and clay and lay bare a floor in the cliff large enough
so we would have plenty of elbow room, and could work down around the
skeleton. We first traced the lateral spines so there was no danger of
digging into the bones from above. This work was done with a digger and
crooked awl, and only the merest trace of the bones were developed;
when bones were exposed, they were instantly filled with shellac. They
fall to powder on exposure without this precaution. The dorsal spines
were traced in the same way and the ribs in front. Then we cut down
several feet outside the skeleton so we could get under it. The skull
was covered with burlap soaked in plaster and removed. The front limbs
came next; and here we learned a lesson that was of inestimable value
to us in taking up the vast bulk of the trunk region. When we turned
the front limbs over a lot of shattered rock fell out and threatened to
bring the bones with it and thus ruin the bones. No human being would
have been able to mend these bones if they were once jumbled together,
so we thanked God, and resolved not to attempt the big sections without
covering the entire trunk beneath as well as above with plaster and
burlap to hold the rock in place, and, of course, the broken bones. A
surgical operation, in fact, in which the broken joints are kept in
place until they reach the skilled preparator in the Museum laboratory.
We dug a very narrow trench under the skeleton, after the upper surface
had been heavily covered with plaster and burlap, and willow poles to
hold it firmly together, dividing the trunk into two sections. Each
weighed about 3,000 pounds. After our trench had been dug we found that
the plastered strips would not stick and pulled part of the rotten rock
off with them, and threatened to allow the bones to fall out too. Our
only plan under the circumstances was to stick the ends of our burlap
strips securely to either side of the skeleton, above and when we
had a number of them firmly attached we threw loose dirt under them
and tamped it firmly thus forcing the plaster strips in place until
they hardened or set and held the loose rock and bones. Then we built
supports under the hardened strips, and continued the process until
the whole section was held firmly together. It was separated at the
dividing line by leaving one section untouched and firmly bedded in
its native rock. We then cut a narrow channel to the bones, above and
below, and by removing the supports broke off the sections through the
bones. The other section was prepared in the same way, the ends were
covered, and our skeleton was ready for transportation.

When we threw out the earth from above and around the specimen we built
a platform so we could back a wagon up to it. Dan McGee who had handled
heavy logs in the eastern woods built a runway of two inch planks to
the wagon. Then the boys, under Charlie’s management started to load
a heavy section, Dan with bar sunk deeply in the earth to act as a
snubbing post, a strong rope around the section and one end in a half
hitch around the bar. They edged the mass towards the slide. What was
their surprise, when the section started in obedience to the law of
gravity, to see the crow bar torn from Dan’s hands and thrown to one
side, and the section unrestrained gaining momentum at an amazing
rate. The men below who were guiding it sprang out of the way, and the
huge mass never stopped until it landed in the bottom of the wagon.
The careful wrapping had prevented any damage, and without doubt it
would have rolled to the bottom of the ravine without hurt. I must
acknowledge that I was very doubtful whether it would be possible ever
to mend the broken front limbs. They had been near the surface, and
had been subject to the effects of frost, and plants, their rootlets
had severed the broken fragments, and fed on their edges destroying
often the contact faces. But Charlie’s patience and endurance settled
the question. And after six weeks of constant effort he had filled
the bones with shellac, picked up the fragments with small tweezers,
cemented them, and pressed them into place. No one without close
inspection could tell that the front limbs had ever been broken. The
tail I restored from scattered bones picked up in the bone-beds,
building it up by comparison with the one I sent to Paris, rather an
enlarged photograph of the specimen made by the division of Photography
of the Geological Survey.

Levi found a second specimen, larger than Charlie’s in the Edmonton,
near Wigmore Ferry, a few miles west of Munson. This we have not yet
prepared. So we returned to Ottawa after three months hunt for big
game in the Edmonton rocks at Drumheller, Alberta, with a carload of
fossils.

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Steveville at the mouth of Berry Creek,
Alberta. Page 52.]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Charlie’s Carnivore, as he found it. Page 55.]




CHAPTER IV

WE EXPLORE DEAD LODGE CANYON


We reached Drumheller, where we purchased from Mr. Moore of the same
place a five horse power motor boat; we also built a flat boat 12 feet
by 28 feet. We pitched two tents on deck, one for sleeping in, the
other for a kitchen. Jack McGee and I went aboard. We threw a rope to
Charlie in his motor boat, which he fastened to a post on the small
deck behind. Some kindly hand pushed us off into the stream, Charlie
got up power and dragged us into the current. The women and children
were on hand to see us off. Our motor boat under Charlie’s management
went chug, chug, down the river at the rate of five miles an hour. The
water was at full flood, covered with drift wood and floating logs,
but we rapidly passed them. Levi had taken the team and wagon over
the rough road to Steveville. As we swiftly glided along, the table
buttes, haystack-like mounds, and long naked ridges that mark out the
exposures of the Edmonton Series, were in full view on either side.
The heads of ravines, under the prairie level were packed with clumps
of aspen and other trees, as was the narrow flood plain and scattered
islands with cottonwoods. We reached the mouth of Willow Creek at one
thirty in the afternoon. The scenery in ever-shifting panoramas, was
beautiful indeed. The rushing river hurried us on from one prospect
to another, each one seemingly more beautiful than the last. The grey
sandstone beds increased in thickness, and the visible coal seams
thinned out. Fifteen miles below Drumheller the Edmonton beds ran under
the river, the yellow silt of the Pleistocene capping the older beds.
Great land slides impinged on the curves of the ox-bows of the winding
stream. Concretions stuck out of the sandstone ledges, like toad stools
on a pine log. The river was about 600 feet wide. At three in the
afternoon the upper buttes had disappeared. Sharply rounded haystack
buttes, or sugar loaves, and narrow ridges that tongued out from the
prairie on the south, were visible. On the north, long grassy slopes
were frequent. The valley widened and the hills retreated towards the
distant prairie. There were ranches along the flood plain. At four
thirty we reached a ranch twenty-five miles below Drumheller. We now
got into the marine Fort Pierre. These beds underlie the Edmonton, and
were exposed along the river’s edge. Rounded bluffs, with here and
there an exposure of dark shales were the order of the day. The timber
shrunk and the grass was short; showing the effects of the unfriendly
alkaline shales on the soil. By five o’clock we had left the last
of the Edmonton beds behind. The Pierre and Pleistocene occupy all
the country. The flood plain widens to about three miles. We tied up
for the night at a willow thicket, and the tireless chug, chug, of
the motor ceased. We prepared to spend the night there. After supper
I went into the Pierre hills, and found numberless large concretions
that contained huge ammonites. But just as the rock was shattered by
the weather so also were the shells. I could not find a good specimen.
We got a number of beautiful ones, however, over the Belly river beds,
where the Pierre again appears, showing that before, as well as after,
the country was occupied with the fresh water beds of the Cretaceous,
the sea had covered the country for a long period of time. We were
early astir, and Charlie hauled us in mid-stream. A strong east wind
blew in our faces, it was disagreeable, because we had to lower our
tents to the deck, as they acted as sails, and the power of the wind on
them was stronger than the current and the five horse power motor would
have driven us up stream. The choppy waves beat constantly against the
front and sides of our scow curling over the deck itself. The wind
howled in the few cottonwoods along the shore and on the islands, that
we passed. The hills on either side were lower; at Bull Pond Creek,
scarcely seventy-five feet in height. About nine o’clock we reached the
fifth ferry below Drumheller. The ferry man had stretched a barbed
wire across the river; Charlie saw it as he drove his motor under it
and shouted to us, Jack rushed for the rear guiding oar and I for the
front one, they were both stuck several feet up in the air, and if the
wire had caught one, it would have swamped us. Jack had his back to the
wire and when he released the oar and stood up, it caught his hat and
threw it in the river. If the wire had been six inches lower, or the
river six inches higher, it would have cut his head off as easily, and
thrown it into the river.

We were also thankful the tents were down. If they had not been, they
would have been torn from the deck. We soon got into a new horizon. I
knew this by the change in the sculpturing of the bluffs. We tied up
to a willow thicket for dinner; the wind began to fall. At ten minutes
of five in the afternoon the naked buttes, towers and ridges of the
Belly River Series of the Cretaceous loomed up in the distance. We soon
reached Steveville, (Fig. 10) and managed to make a landing in the
swift stream, just below the Ferry, and below the mouth of Berry Creek
on whose border the little town stood. A hospitable town it proved to
us; especially have we often enjoyed the hospitality of Steve Hall’s
Hotel; after this jolly good fellow the town gets its name. We were
not far from Mr. Brown’s camp. He had a party here collecting for the
American Museum. I was delighted to learn that my son George, who had
been working for the American Museum under Brown for over a year, had
been appointed on the Geological Survey of Canada, and would join my
party.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Charlie’s Carnivore. Preparing sections
wrapped in plaster. Page 55.]

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Charlie’s Carnivore. Loading with Triplex.
Page 57.]

We found that we had made the eighty miles from Drumheller in sixteen
hours (Fig. 10) travel. And though the trip had been delightful, and
exciting, I was glad to walk again on solid ground. I had gotten used,
however, to the cheerful chug, chug of the little motor, saying “all’s
well.” It took good judgment on Charlie’s part to choose always the
deep water route, on a stream he had never navigated before, to know
which side of an island to take when the current parted, and always
choose the strongest. Mr. Shaw the ferryman at Steveville, showed me
a ledge of rock at the water-level, about a hundred yards above the
ferry, that was literally packed with plants, especially water lily
leaves, that were as perfectly preserved as if impressions were made
of them in wax. I secured a large collection for the Victoria Memorial
Museum. Charlie and I went down the river to spy out the land. We found
a large exposure of the strata on the south side of the river. He was
so fortunate as to find the skeleton of a carnivore that promised to be
the most perfect one known to science at that time, from the Cretaceous
(Fig. 11). This has since been proved to be the truth. In this specimen
the ventral ribs and one front limb appear in their normal position
for the first time in a carniverous dinosaur from the Cretaceous. The
figure shows it as he found it. The double row of ventral ribs, the
head and the hind limbs, with one foot lying on the slope in sight.
Our work was thus laid out for us and on the Fourth of July we moved
our camp to the site shown in the figure, about three miles below
Steveville on the southern side of Red Deer River. Our camp was near a
large area of badlands. A splendid flat for the horses, wood and water
without end. If you will reread my explorations of the Kansas Chalk,
where we had cow chips to burn, and alkaline water to drink, beneath
a burning sun, you will realize how much we enjoyed this camp. (Fig.
15.) It was not perfect, however, the mosquitoes made life a burden,
but with smudges ever going, our nets over our shoulders when we moved
in the sage brush, we were reasonably comfortable, especially as we
got fresh butter, eggs and chickens every week from a neighboring
farmer. This proved the richest camp I ever made. Further, to add to
our blessings we were only three miles from the post office, and a trip
for the mail on our motor boat, was a delightful change from the heavy
work in the beds. Levi came into camp with the outfit and George soon
joined us, and no one ever had so many born fossil hunters in one party
before, full of enthusiasm, each trying to find better specimens than
the other, but with friendly rivalry; we put in the most profitable and
delightful summer I have ever experienced. Charlie took possession
of Jack McGee and settled down to the heavy work of excavating the
carnivore from the face of the cliff. I show you a picture (Fig.
12) taken by Charlie himself of the two men at work, after they had
nearly finished wrapping the two heavy sections of the trunk; Jack is
cutting burlap strips, while Charlie is mending some bones that tore
out when they separated the two sections. Then again (Fig. 13) with
triplex block they are hoisting a section into the wagon. The two men
put in six strenuous weeks, removing the great mass of rock that lay
above the bones, blasting out tons of rock, and dumping it below on
the side of the gulch to make a road. Jack used to say in regard to
the skeleton “it is altogether wonderful.” To which sentiment I fully
agreed. You will get some idea of the labor required if you look at the
picture with Charlie standing in the quarry after the specimen had been
removed. (Fig. 14.) When they hauled the sections out it was along a
ridge so narrow that if the horses had balked or a wheel had slipped
they would have been dashed to pieces in the gorge below. So important
seemed this specimen to me I wanted the advice of the principle
paleontologists in the Eastern United States, before we mounted it. So
with authority from the Director of the Survey, Charlie and I visited
Pittsburgh first, where we were cordially received by Dr. Holland,
the Director. Both Dr. Holland and Mr. Peterson the paleontologist
and also Mr. Earl Douglass, the noted collector and preparator of the
huge _Brontosaurus_ material from Nevada. All three agreed, that in
their opinion we should make a panel mount of the carnivore, not taking
it out of the original matrix. They used the argument that a student
could then come to his own conclusions in regard to it as easily as if
he had collected it himself, while if we made an open mount of it, he
would have to depend on the veracity of the preparator. We were kindly
treated here and saw the magnificent _Brontosaur_ Mr. Douglas had found
in Nevada. It is a fourth larger than the famous _Diplodocus carnegii_.
World renowned, because of the casts Mr. Carnegie has sent to the
Museums of Europe. The _Brontosaur_ is sixteen feet high at the hips
and eighty-two feet long. We hurried on to Washington, and there both
Mr. Gilmour and Gidley, the vertebrae paleontologists, were warm in
their opinions that it would be a crime to take it out of its original
matrix, and thus lose the authority that goes with it. Mr. Gilmour
showed me the fine skeleton of a _Stegosaur_ they had just mounted in
the way he proposed we should mount ours. It lies on a base a couple of
feet above the floor, in the rock in which it was buried. He assured me
that people showed more interest in this mount than in any other in the
National Museum though they had some splendid open mounts. Mr. Gilmour
claims that to advance our science rapidly, complete articulated
skeletons should be left in the original rock in which they were
buried. The scattered skeletons and those well known might be exhibited
in open mounts.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Quarry after Carnivore was removed. Page 57.]

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Sternberg’s Camp 3 miles below Steveville.
Page 54.]

At Philadelphia, I saw Dr. Nolan who has been the Secretary of the
Philadelphia Academy of Science since he was first elected in 1876.
He thought a slab mount the most impressive, and could not realize
how any one would think of mounting it otherwise. Then we traveled
out to Princeton, and this was the first and only time I have been
there. I greatly enjoyed their magnificent collection. I was especially
interested in Waterhouse Hawkins’ paintings on the ceilings, of troops
of _Laelaps_, or duck-billed dinosaurs running on their powerful hind
limbs, carrying their huge tails clear of the ground--a pose that many
paleontological artists stick to with amazing tenacity. I have proved
over and over again that these animals were swimmers. We were invited
to the home of Prof. W. B. Scott, and after I told him the condition of
our carnivore, he at once said the bones should not be taken out of the
matrix. He instanced the case of the great collection of _Iguanodonts_
in the Brussels Museum, some thirty individuals. Many mounted in their
rocky sepulchers. Our carnivore should lie as we found him on a slab
in bold relief. I must confess that my original idea that it should
be mounted over the partial skeleton of a _Trachodont_ on which he
was to be feeding was fast falling away from me in the face of such
opinions by the greatest of our paleontologists. When we reached New
York we met in the American Museum, the President, Dr. Henry F. Osborn,
Dr. Mathews the Curator of Vertebrate Fossils, and his assistants, Mr.
Granger and Barnum Brown. Dr. Osborn gave the opinion that was held by
all the others, that we should mount it as we found it, clearing away
the rock so all the bones stand out from their matrix, but held in it,
except where limb bones might cover some other bones; in which case
they must be removed and mounted clear. I had not a foot to stand on,
when I visited the authority on dinosaurs, Dr. Lull of Yale. He took us
out to lunch and agreed with the other students, without question. I
was glad indeed, therefore to reconsider my first opinion and recommend
to the Director of the Geological Survey, that we should mount it as
the paleontologists had indicated, as I believe this would be a world
specimen in which all students of ancient life would be interested. Mr.
Lambe agreeing with this opinion also.

Charlie spent the greater part of eight months, including the winter
of 1913, in preparing it. There is a great deal more to do before it
is finally mounted permanently in the Museum at Ottawa. Mr. Lambe,
the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Geological Survey of Canada, has
called this noted specimen _Gorgosaurus libratus_, or in English, if
you please, “The fierce looking easily balanced carniverous dinosaur.”
The skull is about three feet long, with all the teeth in place;
they are from four to five inches in length, slightly recurved, with
flattened sides, double edged, with serrated margins. Fierce indeed
must he have looked, when he slunk up on his prey, his eyes flashing
cruelty, with glistening teeth also, and forked tongue. His entire body
from the front of the jaws, to end of the tail was twenty-nine feet in
length. His powerful hind limbs, on which the entire body was balanced,
were ten and a half feet in length. He had three great, claw-armed
toes, and one not so large, raised from the ground like the spur of a
rooster. His front limbs were mere vestigials, only twenty-three inches
long; and the digits were reduced to two, with weak claw bones. We are
unable to imagine to what use they could have been put. The abdominal
walls were protected in front by 16 pairs of ventral ribs, that were
united to the regular ribs by rods of bone on each side; they passed
each other midway in front, in order to allow the increase and decrease
in the walls during the act of breathing, sliding at their ends, back
and forth with each breath. They were as effectively protected as if
sheathed in iron hoops. The long bones were hollow, and the feet like
those of a running bird. In front of the pelvic arch the pubic bones
were provided with two large feet, that, in position, were in a line
with the ventral ribs. In order to rest on these he must have been
able to flex his limbs like a living _Sphenodon_, or New Zealand lizard
(eighteen inches or more in length) does. This seems a more reasonable
pose to me than the one usually given Cretaceous carniverous dinosaurs.
I cannot believe he always made a conspicuous object of himself when
he was hunting over the grassy and rushy plains for his prey, the
herbivorous dinosaurs. I would rather think he slunk along their spoor
or the trails, they had beaten through the rank vegetation, as a tiger
would crawl up on his victim. So I picture him, when I try to put
life into his old dry bones. It has been the habit of paleontologists
to make a composite animal of a dinosaur, with characters of birds,
mammals and reptiles. Several trachodonts and horned dinosaurs I have
seen painted, with a thick rhinoceros-like skin, when we now know they
had scales patterned after the Gila Monster of Arizona today as far as
the scales go. The bones on the underside of the tail, called chevrons,
are shaped like runners, as if to carry out my belief, that he dragged
his tail behind him like a lizard of today. What was his ventral armor
for, if not to protect the vital organs from the hard tough rushes
and swamp grass of his habitat? What would be the use of the ventral
ribs otherwise? From my work in shop and quarry, I am convinced these
great reptiles will be treated and posed as lizards some day. Now the
Vertebrate Paleontologists follow Cope, and Marsh in their views of
these animals when, in reality they are simply reptiles that have long
since become extinct, leaving no living representatives. The nearest
being the lizards.

I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges. Many are entirely devoid of
vegetation. Our work was in a canyon four or five hundred feet deep
and measuring a mile from prairie to prairie, with long creeks or
coulees running back into the flats. Their head branches spreading
out like an open fan, as on Sand Creek, exposing thousands of acres
of denuded rock to the sun. I was so fortunate as to find two more or
less complete skeletons of a new duck-billed dinosaur, one with much of
the beautiful skin impression preserved. The small scales, often mere
tubercles, polygonal in shape arranged like mosaic-work in a pavement
with ornamental elevations “limpet-like” in form, they are arranged in
parallel rows along the abdominal walls and were reduced in size and
number in the tail. Mr. Lambe has figured some of these lovely scales.
He calls the new creature _Stephanosaurus marginatus_[A] or the crowned
lizard. Barnum Brown discovered a wonderfully complete skeleton here,
he gives it the name of _Corythosaurus casuarius_. Because the crested
head resembles a Cassowary. I am delighted to be able to use with the
permission of The American Museum authorities Deckert’s restoration
for my Front Piece. With all the wonderfully complete skeletons my
party have found of Cretaceous dinosaurs, I am forced in this specimen,
to yield the palm to Mr. Brown, I am glad to acknowledge the wonderful
skill of this indefatigable Collector and Paleontologist. Science can
never repay what she owes him for grand skeletons of the Cretaceous
Dinosaurs with which he has enriched the American Museum. Half a mile
away from the skin impression and some of the skeleton, I found part
of the head, and many of the bones, including the ischia, or the two
pelvic bones that point backward and the further ends of these bones
were footed, showing that he could bring his huge body down to the
ground and rest it partly on these strong feet. Unfortunately only half
of the head was present and its top was not complete. However, enough
was preserved to show these saurians with footed ischia had crested
heads, and were different in this respect from the _Trachodon_ already
referred to from the Edmonton Formation. I was so fortunate as to find
in the same beds at Loveland Ferry, ten miles below the mouth of Dead
Lodge Canyon, (a new locality Charlie located in 1915) two skeletons,
within fifteen feet of each other, one with most of the tail, the
trunk to shoulder blades, and the hind limbs. The other contains three
caudal, or tail vertebrae, and the whole column in front, with arches,
front and hind limbs, except that one hind foot and one fore foot were
missing. A very fine head was found pressed back against the back bone,
showing that the animal had died in the water, when the gases raised it
to the surface and the pressure of so large a body against the head,
forced it back. When the gases were liberated the body settled in a mud
bank where it became covered over, and lay buried, through all these
ages, undisturbed until the recession of the bluffs carried away the
tail. Underground channels destroyed the two feet.

[A] The Ottawa Naturalist, January, 1914.

But of these bones themselves; how can I describe their condition, I
have been faithfully at work on them for over three months, (at this
writing), and am just beginning to see that I will have a fine skull
when it is cleaned (See Fig. 16). I have since finished it. It was
preserved in a clay sandstone that chips at right angles to the bones,
breaking them into thousands of pieces. Then the bones are enclosed
with a heavy coating of bog iron, and between bones and around them, is
stone as hard at flint. The bones themselves are poorly petrified. The
spongy bone not filled with rocky material. If the thin outer covering
is broken through, the spongy bone within crumbles like an egg shell.
If a tool should slip through the covering, the bone within is broken
to fragments. How is it possible with such obstacles to ever overcome
them and prepare the skeleton for study and exhibition? Well! first of
all, whenever after the most careful scraping and cutting I got some
bone exposed, I filled it with diluted shellac or a thin solution of
ambroid, a cement I like better than shellac, although it is costly.
Then it must be left, (for a bone wet with shellac is like mud), until
thoroughly dry, and hard. The rock, too, must be held together and
strengthened in the same way. What seemed for weeks an impossible
task, became possible; as I got the bones harder and harder. I had a
solid mass to work against with steel tools. These were either small
chisels or scrapers, made by beveling off the end of large harness
makers straight awls, (made in Germany), or I used tools George made
especially for me. He became quite skilful in tempering tools. It
is needless to say that the tools that can be used in preparing one
specimen cannot be used for another. Where the rock is not too hard,
a saddler’s crooked awl is very useful, but with the skull referred
to it would have been of no use whatever. Patience, and unremitting
enthusiasm, and the hope of success, even with this specimen the worse
one to prepare I ever saw, have made success possible.

So the preparation of these Red Deer River Dinosaurs, require courage
and patience, not only for me, but for the boys, working incessantly
and going slowly to the finish. We must have complete control of our
nerves, a moment’s impatience might wreck a specimen we have sought for
years. It is a great achievement to mount one of the noble relics of
God’s creative power in the past. Our laboratory is Holy Ground. The
earth is a great plant, from which, for countless millions of years the
Creator has been turning out the creatures of his hand. Each, “having
seed in itself.” It is discouraging when I think of the multitudes that
throng our Exhibition Hall, to know how few carry any thing away with
them. They simply satisfy a curiosity, with little conception of the
enormous energy the collector and preparator expend, in heart breaking
months of exploration, and nerve trying labor in the shop. Yet some are
really interested, I remember talking for an hour or more in shop and
exhibition hall, with a minister of the Church of England. When he left
he remarked “I feel as if I had been talking with God” so closely had I
led him to Nature’s great heart. When after months of anxiety and labor
we get a specimen mounted permanently for study or exhibition, we are
relieved of a strain few can comprehend. The nearly complete skeleton
of _Stephanosaurus_ of Lambe, or _Corythosaurus_, of Brown is seen
in (Fig. 16). The front limbs, the shoulders, and half the trunk has
been covered and separated into two sections. I am sitting down to the
right at work on the less perfect specimen. With a little restoration,
however, both individuals can be made into fine mounts. What is missing
in one, can be supplied by making casts of the parts present in the
other. A vast amount of labor was expended in taking up these two
specimens, done chiefly under the management of Charles M. Sternberg.
We might have even lost the one that proved so fine but for him. I had
only found a few toe bones and a tibia and fibula covered with heavy
concretions; his labor, however, developed the greater part of the
skeleton with the best skull of these crested duck-bills we have found.

The rocks of the Belly River series of the Cretaceous are quite
different from those of the Edmonton. There are many layers of gray
sandstone beautifully fluted, often with outlying mushroom-like pillars
(See Fig. 19), as in the picture. Lying around too, are the traveled
boulders that once lay on the prairie that has been carried away by
water piece meal, leaving them behind. The fluting too, is beautifully
represented in this picture showing also, concretions sticking out
at different levels that will sooner or later form pillars under the
processes of the recession of the cliff. The concretions capping them,
preserve them from destruction. Here, (Fig. 20), is a great outlying
butte over three hundred feet high. It borders the flood plain of the
Dead Lodge Canyon. In the central ground, you will notice, if your
eyes are sharp enough, Levi at work on a fossil saurian’s skull. This
has since been figured and described by Barnum Brown under the name
of _Prosaurolophus_. Levi found a very good specimen of a crested
duck-bill lying athwart a precipitous trail down over the badlands from
the prairie. The tail was partially exposed, and not noticed by the
Indians and Cow Boys who for years had traveled on this trail (Fig.
21). Charlie found two in the same quarry. He had discovered the first
one with the tail sticking out from under a mass of clay about 18 feet
high. The prospect of heavy labor never discouraged us. So we attacked
the bank and uncovered the skeleton. At the further end of his specimen
he found the tail of another leading still farther into the face of the
excavation. As there was new surface ground to still explore we covered
it with tons of earth to discourage any would-be explorer here, and
went back to it the next year.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Skeleton of Lambe’s _Stephanosaurus_. Page
67.]

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Sections of _Stephanosaurus_ after wrapping.
Page 67.]

In Figure 22 the reader will see the excavation left after the two
duck-billed dinosaurs were removed. During the season of 1913, Charlie
had the most remarkable success. For though he spent six weeks of
incessant labor collecting his carnivore, he discovered a duck-bill on
his way to assist the teamster with a load. On another occasion while
walking to his carnivore he found a new trachodont at the point of a
hill (See Fig. 23). This skeleton was preserved in a hard siliceous
concretion. During the winter of 1914-15 George prepared the skull for
permanent exhibition (Fig. 24). It was placed in the Hall of Fossil
Vertebrates, the most perfect duck-billed dinosaur skull I have ever
seen. It is in its natural condition, not flattened or otherwise
injured by pressure, as is usually the case. We think the skeleton
over thirty feet in length, we secured much of the skin impression
with it, showing a different pattern from the other known forms. Mr.
Lambe calls it _Gryposaurus_, the high nosed lizard. It will take
months of labor to prepare this skeleton. Mr. Lambe in his summary of
our work says in the blue book Summary for 1913, of the Geological
Survey of Canada, page 293: “The principal field work consisted of
an expedition to the Red Deer River, Alberta, to collect dinosaurian
and other vertebrate remains from the Belly River Cretaceous in the
neighborhood of, and below Berry Creek (Steveville). The party was
composed of Charles H. Sternberg and three assistants, its success is
to be attributed not only to the skill and experience of those forming
the party, [my three sons], but also to the manner in which it was
equipped. The party was on Red Deer River from June 20th to October
3. The collection from these rocks, made by the expedition of 1913,
reveals in a striking manner the wonderful variety of the dinosaurian
life of the period. The field collection of 1913 includes members
of the _Ceratops_ (horned dinosaurs, quadrupedal, plant eaters),
_Trachodontidae_ (duck-billed dinosaurs, plant eaters), _Theropoda_
(flesh eaters), and _Stegosauridae_, (heavily armoured plant eaters),
_Plesiosaurs_, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fishes are
abundantly represented, and some mammalian remains were also found.”
I know of no wilder or more fascinating scenery than that in the Dead
Lodge Canyon of the Red Deer river of Alberta. The great layers of
sandstone are often beautifully fluted. The strata of clay between
sometimes thin out to nothing (Fig. 25). The constant change in butte,
and tower ridge and pinnacle, with great concretions, or small ones
sticking out of escarpments, like window sills of a skyscraper. Some
of the photographs will give a faint idea of the beauty of this great
canyon. I here wish to place on record my appreciation of the splendid
skill developed by my sons Charlie and George, who took all the
photographs I have used to illustrate this book, except those to whom
credit will or has been given. Levi too, is learning the art rapidly
as evidenced by the illustrations for my expedition for the British
Museum for 1916. Great credit too is due Mr. Clark, the head of the
Photographic Division of the Survey, who developed and printed these
fine photographs. Neither can I forget the kindness of both directors
under whom I served, Dr. Brock and Mr. McConnell, who presented me with
full sets of the photographs we have taken in field and shop, and
Museum and also lantern slides of many.

While in camp, often after supper when our day’s work was at an end,
in a reminiscent mood, I told the boys stories. They had often heard
before, of my adventures in other fossil fields, and other days, but
as distinctly printed on memory’s pages, as if they had occurred but
yesterday. I remember recalling an adventure of George and myself in
the chalk of Kansas. We had been up towards Monument Rocks and were
returning to camp at Elkader, at the mouth of Beaver Creek in Logan
county, when we observed a storm gathering in the northwest, and
northeast quite threatening indeed. We were three miles away, and drove
like Jehu to get to shelter before the storm broke upon us. However, in
spite of our efforts, the storm overtook us on the level prairie. The
thunder clouds threw forked lightning to the ground around and in front
of us. Where it struck the dry grass of the prairie a little cloud of
dust would rise, and the grass would take fire to spread a few yards
in a circle, when the rain would follow up and put it out. The thunder
cracked in deafening peals with tongues of electricity following at
once. A calf was struck and killed a short distance from us, but we
escaped with a good soaking.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges. Page
62.]

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Pillars cut out of the solid rock. Page 66.]

A still more remarkable incident happened to Levi and me at
Livingstone’s ranch in Gove county, Kansas, seven miles south of
Quinter. Our tents were pitched on Hackberry Creek near the ranch barn,
a large affair covered with sheet iron. Towards evening we saw a great
dust cloud coming towards us from the northwest. I sent Levi to the
barn to put the horses in, they had been standing in the corral near
by. He had hardly accomplished this, when the storm was upon us; the
gravel and sand beat on the iron roof like hail. He stood in the door
with a lighted lantern. I feared the roof might fall in and break the
lamp, and set fire to the hay, and I shouted to him to put it out, but
he could not hear me. It became instantly dark as midnight, as the air
was dense with gravel, sand and dirt driven at terrible speed by the
raging wind. I started to the barn a hundred yards away, and got my
face cut with the flying sand, my eyes blinded with dirt. But I reached
him and put out the light and we attempted by holding each other’s hand,
to reach the tents. Suddenly we saw an electric light hanging over our
tent, on a telephone wire that was stretched above. Then another and
another sparkled in the darkness along the line and lighted up the
posts and wire fence on either side of the lane we were following.
As far as we could trace the telephone wire, little lights swung in
the wind as if some one had turned on a switch to light us to camp.
It was certainly a little uncanny to say the least, and if I had been
superstitious, I might have been frightened. Levi went off to bed in
another tent, I watched the strange phenomenon until I too, got tired,
and turned into my bed and went to sleep. All this is part of a Fossil
Hunter’s day’s work. Although this was the first time I had ever seen
an exhibition of this peculiar kind of electric display on the prairie
I was sure it represented what is called St. Elmo’s Fire at sea.

On July 18, 1913, I note that I had worked all day on Charlie’s large
trachodont which Mr. Lambe called, as I said above, _Gryposaurus_.
Twenty feet of the skeleton, besides the head was present. On page 23,
Book A, field notes for 1913, I say: “The skull is 3 feet 3 inches
long. Distance between the orbits, 9 inches. It is 19 inches from the
margin of the mandibles to the top of the skull. Which has a high
narrow set of nasals, with curved beak shaped like Brown’s New Mexican
_Trachodont_.” Then again, on page 25, “I have worked all day on
Charlie’s huge trachodont. It is a wonder, poorly preserved in a huge
brown flint concretion that is shattered into irregular fragments,
that break through the bones as well. The under part of the skeleton,
however, is in grey sandstone and clay. The body lay on its left side,
then took a turn and rested on the ventral surface. The ossified
tendons are different from the ordinary duck-bills, both with or
without crests; they are often barbed in the center and bifurcated at
one end, with the other flattened. This specimen is evidently new. I am
very anxious to save it.”

The fluted pyramids and Gothic towers stand out distinctly to the south
of the specimen in the early morning and after sundown: but in the heat
of the day the colors blend so, the sharp outlines of the different
strata are not easily distinguished.

On July 19th Mr. Barnum Brown went down the river with his scow, motor
boat and rowboat, bearing his party of five men and all his outfit.
They intended to camp on Sand Creek, which they did, and never left
that richest of all the camps in the Belly River Series in Dead Lodge
Canyon for three seasons; the richest, doubtless, in history. I believe
there are more exposures of the strata there, than all the rest of
the exposures put together. I could not leave the great carnivore
Charlie had found. Or my wonderful _Chasmosaurus_ skeleton, showing the
dermal covering for the first time in the history of horned dinosaurs.
Neither could we leave the splendid skeleton of _Gryposaurus_, or
my new duck-billed dinosaur to follow Brown and share with him the
gleanings of that rich field. Consequently, with his five collectors,
all first class men, filled with energy and enthusiasm, with such a
leader and hunter, it is little wonder that he secured that year a
great collection, now being mounted in the American Museum. He also
spent the seasons of 1914 and 1915 there also, most successfully. The
Belly River beds below Steveville and near our camp, consist chiefly,
as already mentioned, of strata of silver grey sandstone, alternating
with yellowish or ash-colored clays. Notice the picture (Fig. 25), how
the dark clay bed feathers out. The exposed clay beds crack after a
rain, like the mud flats of the river, and curl up on the surface when
dry. The fluting of the sand-beds is due to the fact that they contain
so much clay, that during a rain, the whole surface is puddled and the
water cannot pass through the thin coating of mud, and runs off the
surface in countless rivulets sculpturing the soft mass into the most
beautiful flutings imaginable. This we have often noticed before.

There are neither wells or springs in these beds, not enough water
penetrating them to produce either. There are, however, many
underground passages through which the water finds its way during a
rain to lower levels. Near the top of the badlands, or anywhere through
them, often, a sink hole is formed. The water first forming a cistern,
until a way is found for it downward, and the water escapes at last
through the mouth of a cave, it has formed. These passages are choked
with fallen rock from above, or from the sides, which in turn are
disintegrated and are carried out by water until we have a series of
natural bridges over the chasm, which break down at last, and produce a
ravine. We used water from these cisterns on several occasions to make
plaster. There was one containing many gallons near Charlie’s carnivore.

We were often bitterly disappointed in our finds. Take for instance
Levi’s crested dinosaur. He found some exposed tail vertebrae a little
to one side of a horse trail that came over the rocks from the open
prairie above, down to a branch of One Tree Creek, not far from our
camp, there Levi found 20 tail vertebrae, the pelvic arch, and hind
limbs and many ribs. So as we progressed in uncovering these we felt
confident that the entire skeleton was buried there. We were mistaken;
no head, neck or front limbs were present. From the fact that some of
the long pelvic bones had been snapped off, we concluded the missing
parts had gone in death to gorge a living specimen of _Gorgosaurus_,
the Tyrant of the Everglades. Then Charlie removed tons of rock from
where he thought the tail of his _Gorgosaur_ lay, only to find it had
taken another direction, and the same amount of energy was necessary
there as he had wasted on a false scent.

In my notes of the 11th of July, I speak of the windy day: “So strong
was the current as I clung to the steep and barren slopes; I would
often have lost my footing but for my faithful pick, whose point I
drove into the soft rock when I felt as if I was about to be blown into
a deep canyon. I would cling to my pick until there was a lull, or I
had secured a better footing. My pick, under the providence of God,
often saved my life. Once in the brakes of the Permian beds of Texas,
on a Saturday evening a great storm threatened. I though we could
reach Mr. Galyean’s house before it burst. His son was with me, a boy
of about 15 years of age. We had gone only a short distance, however,
when the rain fell in sheets, not only drenching us to the skin but
filling innumerable ditches with water running like a mill race. These
we must cross. I remember we passed through the same patch of weeds
repeatedly, so I knew in the darkness we were walking in a circle.
Every few feet was a deep and narrow ditch full to the brim with red
muddy water. I found these rushing streams by pushing my pick ahead of
me, as the only time we saw anything was when the lightning flashed. At
last we got sight of the light in McBride’s house a mile up the creek
from Galyean’s. We thus secured the direction and thought we were all
right, but without our knowledge, some one moved it from a south to an
east window and we got off again, and before we knew it were slipping
down into the roaring Coffee Creek full of driftwood. If we had slipped
into it, both of us would have been lost. The boy had hold of my coat
tails; I struck the point of my pick into the muddy slope and swung
around with John hanging on behind describing the arc of a circle. The
pick held while we dug holds with our heels to support us until I could
reach upward and take another hold with the faithful pick. Thus we got
out on the level flood plain of the creek. I then allowed John to take
the lead, and he took me as if by instinct, safely to his father’s
house where we were soon drying our clothes before the fireplace,
heaped high with blazing cottonwood chunks.”

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Outlying Buttes over 300 feet high. Page 66.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Levi found a good Crested Dinosaur. Page 66,
67.]

Mr. Lawrence M. Lambe the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Survey
visited my camp on the 12th of September, 1913. We visited all the
different localities where were the different specimens we were
collecting, much to his delight. He described many of them the
following winter. In a large exposure near Steveville, we were led by
my son George to a fine turtle, one of the largest forms. The shell is
over two feet long.




CHAPTER V

HUNTING HORNED DINOSAURS ON THE RED DEER RIVER.


Please, dear reader, return with me to the first camp we made below
Steveville (Fig. 15). I would like to tell you of our successful hunt
for horned dinosaurs, the reptiles that carry on their shoulders
the largest known skulls of any land animal living, or dead. I had
gone around the flood plain to the mouth of a ravine below camp and
following it up to its head searching the denuded exposures, on either
side. Suddenly, I stumbled on a couple of orbital horn-cores of a new
genus of these strange creatures. The nasals and much of the face had
been disintegrated by exposure to rain and frost; one complete lower
jaw and part of the other was in place, however. With eager hands I
used my little pick and digger, cutting into the face of the cliff. The
horn-cores were pointed heavenward. I soon got behind them and followed
up the great crest that projected backward into the rock, of which some
fifteen towered above; I needed help and returned to camp a mile over
the hills, for the boys. George and Levi responded to my call. The rock
was thrown out and scraped away with team and scraper, tons on tons of
it, my enthusiastic assistants threw down. We soon found that most of
the skeleton was present, and it required a large floor to lay all the
bones bare. At least enough of them so we could take them up without
injuring them.

While working around the skeleton, we dug up what appeared to be
impressions of mud cracks, but Charlie who came to visit us, concluded
at once they were skin impressions. This seemed too good to be true, as
none were known before from horned dinosaurs. We were soon, however,
forced to believe it, when a large chunk of rock broke in two and
revealed the regular casts of polygonal scales, the upper and lower
sides. They were arranged in the most beautiful mosaic patterns, some
mere tubercles, as in the trachodonts, especially under the limbs.
Along the back there were larger scales, often rounded or six sided,
from two, to two and a half inches in diameter. This was new, and
unexpected, as the men of science who had made a special study of the
horned dinosaurs believed they had a thick skin with heavy dermal
scutes, or plates inserted into it, as a protection against the
rapacious carnivores. But here, as in the _Trachodonts_, we were so
fortunate as to prove what we had proved so oft before, “The wisdom of
man is foolishness to God.” How could it be otherwise. Yet I am free to
acknowledge there are no class of men so positive in their conclusions.
I once heard four different men at a Scientific Academy deliver four
papers on the Creation of the world, each one was different and each
man thought he was right. I have proved too often in my own experience
in the field that I was mistaken, to doubt that other scientific men
might be also. I could write a book about the mistakes of scientific
men but will not burden my pages with them except as I discover facts
absolutely different from those commonly accepted, as in the case of my
_Chasmosaurus_ under discussion. In the past men have been too anxious
to publish results before complete skeletons have been found and almost
invariably, when one is found, it does not bear out in its own person
the expectations of their authors.

This field, so rich in material, in which we get the skin impressions,
as well as complete skeletons enables us to speak “as one having
authority” about them. Here then, although we have an animal with
limbs of equal length, the body was covered with thin scales arranged
like mosaic-work in a pavement. Without much doubt the skull had
been subjected to great pressure for many ages. The rock in which
it was embedded has been lifted some twenty-five hundred feet above
the position it occupied when it was mud at the bottom of the lake.
Mr. Lambe, the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Geological Survey of
Canada, has called this remarkable dinosaur _Chasmosaurus_, on account
of the great chasms or gaps cut into the crest and skull. As far as I
know this is the most complete skull known of this species. While at
work on my specimen I learned some remarkable things. There is always
an opening between the horns of these saurians. In Triceratops, it is
midway between the end of the beak, and the crest. In this specimen,
however, it is two feet from the end of the beak, and three feet to the
further end of the crest. Then, though the skull proper in front of the
crest is quite heavy and strong, and with large mandibles, and rather
a large horn over the nose, as compared with the small ones over the
eyes. The crest seems to be built for strength, as the central bar, the
side and distal bars are strong, but beveled off to the large openings;
and masses of bone are scooped out of the skull--adapted evidently
to add to the strength, but to reduce the weight. This is not to be
wondered at, when we study the skeleton. For we find the neck-crest
not only covered the neck and shoulders, but extended back over seven
of the dorsal vertebrae, to within a few inches of the pelvic arch. I
do not think the animal was much bigger than a cow: about 9 feet from
beak to drop of the tail; and the latter was short, barely dragging on
the ground. When cutting a path through the dense sub-tropical foliage
of reeds, rushes and grass, with many a bog, he simply parted the rank
vegetation with his triangular-shaped head and crushed it under his
four large spreading feet. But when he was attacked, down went the
head, up went the crest, and a shield well armed with horns on the
face, and horny projections along the sides of the crest was instantly
presented to his foe. As the only vulnerable place of attack, to the
tiger of the everglades, he would try to strike with his powerful
claw-armed feet somewhere in the flank, for then he could lay bare the
vital organs and soon destroy his prey.

But our _Chasmosaurus_ was on the watch to prevent this very thing. The
grass is beaten down, a ring is formed, and he often rushes forward
with open beak. If his pincer-like bill once closes on the quivering
flesh of the carnivore, he would surely get his “pound of flesh.” If a
moss covered bog is within reach he would try to get to it, for then
he would plunge in, and be safe, as no bipedal flesh eater will dare
to follow. Our herbivore, however, can swim through it, or through the
morass as easily as a living hippopotamus.

You will notice the horny beak is shaped like that of a great turtle,
though the lower jaws supporting it below are two feet in length.
The crest behind, where it overhangs the back, is nearly four feet
along the curve. We approximately can guess the distance from the
lower margin of the jaw to the top of the nasal horn to be nearly two
feet. At each angle of the cross-bar behind on the crest, is a long
horn-covered spike, while the sides of the crest are also armed with
smaller and blunter ones. The orbital horns are round and conical, not
much over six inches in length, while the one on the bridge of the nose
is over a foot long.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--Excavation after taking out Charlie’s
_Stephanosaurus_. Page 67.]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--Charlie’s New Trachodont. Page 67.]

Now, with the rapidity of thought we will return to our workshop.
When George prepared the head of this fine specimen, I found it was
the exact size of the one I found in 1913. I therefore took a cast of
the parts that were missing in mine. In order to accomplish this, I
covered the front of the head with lard oil and then with molding wax,
being careful to make it in sections so it would come off and be heavy
enough to prevent distortion. When all was ready and we had colored our
plaster to resemble the fossil bone--no small task, by the way, as we
had to learn to mix colors as well as do the work of a sculptor--with
wax. Then the mold is separated from the skull and stuck together,
plaster strengthened with dextrine is poured into it, and on hardening
I got an exact facsimile of the original specimen. This I fastened
to my skull in which these parts were missing, and this gave us two
specimens for public exhibition. Otherwise we could not have exhibited
this dinosaur, as it would not have done to guess at these missing
parts, as the early scientists were in the habit of doing. Now we can
point to the complete specimen should anyone doubt the truthfulness
of the restoration. All through the Belly River Series of rocks are
bone-beds. There are two below Steveville, one near the top, and the
other near the bottom of the exposures. They lie usually on a bed of
clay, as if they had been drifted in from a lake (into which, they
had been carried by a river) and lined the shore in the mud. In some
places I secured hundreds, yes thousands of bones and teeth of many
species, as well as shields of sturgeons and the enameled scales of
gar-pikes as perfect as if picked up along a recent lake shore. There
were also bones and shells of a great variety of soft-shelled turtles,
and others, with beautifully sculptured shells; they range in size from
less than six inches across, to over two feet. Crocodile bones, and the
dermal, or skin plates of plated dinosaurs, were common. We secured
hundreds of the pavement teeth of the ray Cope called _Myledaphus_,
also countless vertebrae of the reptile _Champsosaurus_. Probably all
the species of this rich fauna, are represented in these bone-beds. The
fragments we collected came in good play, when Charlie and I mounted
the _Trachodon_ skeleton. As we were able to restore the missing tail
from the caudal vertebrae we picked up in bone-beds in the Edmonton
Series, near Drumheller, Alberta. We found many horn-cores also in
the bone deposits. Although we found many of the long bones we were
unable to take up many on account of the expense. First, the bone has
to be located, i. e. discovered. Then likely a road has to be built
to it in order to haul in to it plaster and water. After one side is
uncovered and plastered, it has to remain twelve hours to harden. Then
we must return to turn it over and plaster the other side, allowing it
to harden before we go after it with a horse and sled. During all this
time we might have found a complete skeleton.

When we reached our big scow in 1914, we found the seams had opened
along the bottom and we were forced to recaulk it. The first thing
was to clean out the old oakum and coal tar. Our eyes filled with the
poisonous tar irritating them almost beyond endurance. After that was
done, with arms above our heads, we drove in the oakum with caulking
tools and then retarred the seams. I will acknowledge I did not do my
full duty here, I spent most of my time in the hills exploring, which
was more to my liking. This trying work the boys accomplished at last.
Then came the supreme test. Will it keep out the water? We slid her
down on skids into the river, and she rode as buoyantly as a duck,
though not so gracefully.

We had picked out a place to camp three miles above “Happy Jack Ferry.”
So George, Charlie, and Mr. Johnson, hauled the scow up to the camping
ground with our motor boat, accomplishing a feat, I had thought
impossible. Fortunately they had a strong wind in their favor, and
the tents pitched on board, acted as sails and helped them breast the
current. Levi and I moved the lumber up to camp in our wagon pulled by
our team of horses. We crossed many narrow gulches, and were obliged to
dig roads across them. In fact we got stuck in the mud of one, where
backwater from the river had deposited several feet of mud in it. We
got into camp, however, ahead of the scow. In my note book I often
speak of the terrible heat of those days. We had hot work on the rough
exposures without water. Who of us will ever forget, when at night,
we returned to our camp, how we lay with faces half submerged in the
cold water of the river, and drank from her refreshing flood until we
could drink no more. Drinking often a quart or more without injury.
The hardest work of all was to tramp over the burning beds without
success. How many days we spent in useless effort. Near this camp,
however, Charlie got a fine skull of a new trachodont or duck-billed
dinosaur, described later by Mr. Brown as _Prosaurolophus_. Near here,
also, George found his famous _Chasmosaurus belli_, Lambe. Mr. Brown,
however, retains Professor Marsh’s name of _Ceratops_. Here too, I
secured the complete club at the end of a plated dinosaur’s tail, of
which I will have more to say later. Showing as has been my experience
that untiring effort will accomplish results in the fossil fields as in
every walk in life.

During Charlie’s and my absence in Montana, George found a large
skeleton of a _Corythosaurus_. The remarkable part about it was the
complete limbs in position. It was discovered in Mr. Jackson’s
pasture. Now Mr. Jackson is an old cowman. He was range boss for the
brother of Admiral Beresford of England, who built a ranch here. On
Beresford’s death, Mr. Jackson took possession of the ranch and the
ferry is named “Happy Jack” after him. In fact he is quite a noted
character and one of the few old cattle men living here.

At this camp too, Mr. Patrick Disney, from Oxford University, England,
joined my party as a guest. He came to these wilds to learn something
about fossil hunting. He was indeed helpful, and welcome, but the war
breaking out he started for the front, he wanted to be, and was among
the first to join his colors from Canada. We learned later he became a
gallant officer in the aerial fleet.

We continued to suffer all summer from the intense heat. The mosquitoes,
however, were not as bad as usual. All the grass on the prairies dried
up. The crops were a perfect failure. But for the liberality of the
government in supplying the homesteader with food through the winter
and spring and seed to plant, they would have been obliged to leave the
country. This timely aid, however, enabled them, owing to the great
rainfall in 1915, to reap the greatest harvest in the history of these
people, so far east of the mountains on the semi-arid plains.

On August fifth, we succeeded in getting our scow some two miles below
“Happy Jack Ferry,” (See Fig. 32) to a camp we made near a specimen
George had found of a plated dinosaur. Charlie and Disney brought down
the motor boat, but owing to the very low stage of water, they were in
it, most of the time, hauling the boat through sand, by main force.
Our scow floating with the current beat them to the landing. We left
Levi to haul all the fossils from our upper camp to Denhart on the
new branch of the Central Pacific Railway, between Swift Current and
Bassano, Alberta. For two months George labored with never less than
one assistant on his plated dinosaur, the prize of the season. It seems
that some caudal vertebrae were seen by him sticking out of a hard
siliceous concretion in the face of a bluff, with thirty-five feet of
sandstone on top. This was tough and hard to dig up. He used blasting
powder as you see in two pictures where George is running away after
firing the fuse, the other shows the explosion. It took a month of
constant labor to get down to the concretion and another to cut away
enough of it, so it could be handled when cut in sections. The constant
hammering opened closed seams in the flinty rocks so it could be
removed in chunks, with the sections of the fossil within them. George
secured the pelvic arch, hind limb bones, many ribs, caudal and dorsal
vertebrae (likely the entire column in front of the pelvis), the skull,
with its necklace of dermal plates behind. Then there were many of
the huge plates though not all in position.

The figures show the quarry, and the road we made with four horses
straining to haul the sections out. You will also see George running
from the quarry after lighting the fuse, and in the next picture the
explosion. We expended far more labor in this quarry than any we found,
or on any other individual specimen. Yet our labor was nothing compared
to what must be expended before the skeleton is mounted, owing to the
difficulties of preparation. The last picture in this series shows the
amount of labor required to throw out the loose material, as well as
the beautifully sculptured rock in the vicinity.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Prepared skull of _Gryposaurus_, Lambe;
_Kritosaurus_, Brown. Page 67.]

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--The strata of clay thins out to nothing often.
Page 69.]




CHAPTER VI

PLATED DINOSAURS THE MOST UNIQUE OF THEM ALL


When the frost was on the bull berry, we experienced the strange
sensation of making jelly in camp. We beat the berries out of the
bushes, in which they clung in clusters around sharp thorns, on to
tarpaulins spread below on the ground. The single berry is about the
size and color of a red currant. We filled our motor boat full of
boxes with the acid fruit, and drove it to our scow. There we took
pails full of the berries, and sank them into the clear water of Red
Deer river. Then stirred them with a stick, so that all the leaves,
decayed fruit, and bits of branches or other foreign matter could float
away down the river, the perfect fruit settled to the bottom. The fruit
was then cooked on our large camp stove until thoroughly done, when it
was pressed through muslin bags, and cooked as long as there was any
scum rising to the surface, which was carefully skimmed off the boiling
surface. Then equal parts of sugar by weight was put in, and the moment
it was dissolved the mixture was taken off the stove and put into
Mason jars. When cool it was a fine, reddish colored jelly. We made
twenty-four gallons, or six gallons for each married man in the party.
In camp we used it constantly, and it took the place of all other fruit
and pickles. As usual, we were unable to get our fossils out of the
ground before cold weather came. We secured fifty boxes weighing about
twenty-five tons. I am happy to report, also, that after Charlie found
his _Centrosaurus_ or _Monoclonius_ skull, and after I had spent four
weeks of the most strenuous labor of which I am capable, I succeeded in
getting a very good skeleton from the pelvis to the end of the tail,
of a crested duck-bill. It was especially interesting, because nearly
all the impression of the skin was present in a large section of the
tail; giving also, the contour of the tail immediately after death.
This was the best tail of a trachodont we found. While we were working
early and late to get out the material before the real cold weather
set in, our horse Bob, in going up a steep and narrow sled road corked
his mate, the bay mare. She bled badly, and was put out of commission
temporarily. Luckily, Mr. Bestrum, who was assisting us with an extra
team, had another horse who took the injured one’s place.

On the twenty-fifth of September, 1914, we got our scow dismantled,
and the next day out on land. In the meantime we camped on the sandy
flood plain of the river, near our scow. One night my tent blew down
on top of me asleep in my cot; however, these are small matters, and
soon forgotten if I had not referred to them in my notes. On the
twenty-eighth, we hauled in our last load of fossils and loaded our
car at Denhart. This point was a switch on the open prairie; the store
building was deserted. A miserable day, with the wind blowing a gale,
from the north. I built an oven of some loose bricks, that were lying
about, and cooked a meal as best we could, on the wind swept plain. It
was four o’clock in the afternoon before we started on our thirty mile
drive to Brooks, where we were to take our train homeward bound.

We lost our road, or rather it petered out, as they say in the west,
and with the brilliant moon riding buoyantly in the heavens as a guide,
we pressed on over the rough prairie sod. Suddenly as if to amuse our
tiresome journey, God’s Moving Pictures, The Northern Lights burst
upon us in all their glory. It seemed as if a heavy map was suddenly
unwrapped in the sky, the folds taking a fan-like perpendicular radiate
shape, then another and another, was unrolled, until the whole northern
arc of the heavens was vibrating with light in white bands, edges in
colors of many delicate and exquisite tints. At eleven o’clock that
night, stiff and hungry, our solitary wagon rolled into Brooks, and
an ambitious Chinaman soon had on our table a hot dish of beef and
onions we ate with the relish hunger gives.

When we went west in June, 1914, we stopped at Toronto, and visited
the Royal Museum there. The geological and mineralogical halls are on
the top floors. The principal light comes through ground glass giving
a beautiful diffused light. The glass cases show no signs of reflected
light. Every specimen, stands out distinctly, as if laid on a table.
They had mounted the mosasaur skeleton I sold Professor Parks some
years before. The only large vertebrate on exhibition.

We were anxious to make a trip by water and pressed on to Port
McNicoll, where we took the steamer Keewatin and slept that night in
state rooms instead of Pullman berths, as had been so common with us
of late. We woke next morning in the narrow stream between Lake Huron
and Superior. The scenery was grand and impressive, the shore lines
clothed with second growth timber. We passed freighters hauling ten
thousand tons of coal to the west, and the same amount of iron-ore to
the eastern smelters. The channel was marked by floating buoys, each
one carrying a light that was intermittent, as fast as it went out, it
was lighted again by two permanent lights below. Carbide is used to
produce the main light, and to keep the others going. There were also
lighthouses at intervals, built in the water on strong cement bases.
This passage way of the ships is as well lighted at night, as the
streets of a city. We thought the boat ride more enjoyable than the
monotonous train; and we enjoyed the sensation of being lifted into
the mighty Superior by the Soo Locks. Then our captain threaded his way
far from the shore line through the reaches of this great inland sea.
Towards night a dense fog rose. Our siren sounded the alarm every few
moments, and on either side, before and behind, other fog whistles,
too, kept up the refrain “Look out! Look out! Danger! Danger!” We soon
got used to the music and were lulled to sleep in our narrow state
rooms. We slept in peace, and the next morning the sun rose clear,
and scattered his brilliant rays of light over the headlands of the
mountains back of Port Arthur, lighting up, too, the grain elevators
and pretty town.

On the seventh of June we drove our team to “Happy Jack Ferry,” all
ready for another campaign.

Of all the strange dinosaurs we found in our hunts for big game in
the Red Deer canyon nothing, I think, exceeded the plated dinosaurs
in wonderful characters. The first I ever found, I mention in the
Proceedings of the Kansas Academy of Science for 1908 on page 257.
“Last February, Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History
staff, published a description for the first time of his armoured
dinosaur which he named _Anchylosaurus magniventris_. It was discovered
on Hell Creek, Montana, in 1905 by the American Museum Expedition. It
represents he says a group of _Stegosauria_ characteristic of the late
Cretaceous of this country.”

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Discovery of George’s _Chasmosaurus_.
(_Ceratops_). Page 86.]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--George’s _Chasmosaurus_ lying in quarry. Page
80.]

In 1905 while conducting an expedition to the Kansas chalk I discovered
the broken up skeleton of what I considered a large new sea tortoise
with an ossified carapace, it attracted my attention and I knew it must
be new, but as it was badly weathered, and detached from its matrix,
concluded it could not be used and left it there. Later, my son George
brought into camp, a few miles from Hackberry Creek, where I found my
specimen, some peculiar plates, like the ones already mentioned. But as
I had no knowledge of Barnum Brown’s discovery I concluded they were
neurals of a new turtle. These I sent to Dr. Weiland for description.
Last month I was his guest at Yale University museum. He asked me why I
thought it a new turtle. After giving my reasons, he told me they were
new enough, but these plates were of an armored dinosaur. Later through
George’s efforts, I secured the skeleton I found the year before. I
went over the mass of fragments and separated the armor, and found the
entire skeleton was covered with a completely ossified dermal covering,
in most beautiful patterns, the larger scutes were diamond-shaped,
with round angles, with elevated keel down the center, the interspaces
filled with small plates of various forms. This is the second instance
of remains of a dinosaur being found in the Kansas chalk, showing that
the bones of swamp and land saurians in shore, drifted out to sea. The
other individual was a duck-billed dinosaur called by Professor Leidy,
_Hadrosaurus_; but later Prof. Marsh identified it as belonging to his
genus _Claosaurus_ of the Lance Beds of Wyoming. As far as I know no
other specimen of dinosaurs have been found in the chalk of Kansas.
Strange indeed then that we find enough of the skeleton of a dinosaur
for identification. Separated from the dinosaur beds of Wyoming by at
least 10,000 feet of strata and in time a couple of million years at
least, showing that we do not as yet know the time and space occupied
by dinosaurs on this continent.

Later still in the Belly River Beds of the Dead Lodge Canyon, in 1914,
George found the skeleton of a similar species. Mr. Lambe gives it the
name of _Euoplocephalus_; no complete skeleton have been found of this
strange dinosaur except in the Belly River Series, though a fine skull
and other bones were found by Brown, in the Edmonton beds of the Red
Deer river, similar to his Lance Creek genus in Montana. Last year,
1915, both Charlie and I found some fine material near the mouth of
Dead Lodge Canyon and at Loveland Ferry twelve miles below. As already
mentioned, George found the best specimen we have obtained. From all
three (and the tail club I secured in 1914), we get a very good idea
of this peculiar reptile. One thing I learned from the specimen is,
that the plates are not co-ossified as I had supposed from my study
of the Chalk specimen, but that between the larger plates, are quite
small ones arranged like chain armor so as to allow the body to move
in any direction, unhindered by the heavy armor; these small ossified
scutes are so beveled as to move on themselves, that is, they are
imbricated, while the others are not, and are arranged like mosaic-work
in a pavement. Mr. Brown was the first to publish a figure of a skull
of his Edmonton species. The skull itself has the bony skin plates
anchylosed to it. Mr. Brown tells me that even the eyes are protected
by sliding shutters that drop down over them in time of danger. The
horned beak is rounded in front and the few teeth behind seem of little
functional value. The beak however, was a powerful organ for digging
up roots, or nipping off foliage. The head was very small compared to
the immense body. The great ribs over five feet long, and hoop-shaped,
giving the body a round, barrel-like form. The heavy bony armor of huge
plates, some of them weighed in their fossil form twenty-five pounds
or more; though light and spongy in life. Many of these plates were
harder and denser bone than the ones mentioned before, keeled down
the center. The small nodules of bone fitted in between the plates
and were so beveled as to move on each other like chain armor. The
entire body was thus covered and protected. Unfortunately no complete
skeleton has been found with every dermal plate in position. Of course
I am not familiar with the many skeletons of this form Mr. Brown has
discovered and have been looking a long time for a Memoir describing
these interesting forms. The great desideratum is to find one of these
wonderful reptiles with all the armor in place; just as the skin was
found in the “Dinosaur Mummy” and the Senckenberg specimens of the
crested duck-bills. However we already know there was an anchylosed
necklace back of the head and that the end of the tail was club-like. I
secured several of these clubs.

Let us go back to the time when the Belly River rocks were forming in
the bottom of the lake. It is spring; every thing throbs with life.
The sap is surging through the trees arrayed in their brightest tints,
the ground below, is carpeted with flowers in endless variety and hue;
there is a clump of evergreens, and here one of poplars, while in the
distance are, figs, magnolias, and a wealth of other trees, all adding
beauty to the scene. Along the lake shore, dense masses of horse-tail
rushes, moss and long coarse grass cast waving shadows. On the quiet
bays vast masses of water lilies waft their incense on the air, and
delight our senses. Above us the swinging redwood branches shut out the
direct rays of the sun which falls as if filtered through the stained
windows of some great cathedral. Let us creep along to the second
bench that overlooks the jungle of vegetation, that spreads out in
great meadows to the lake itself. See that thicket! Let us approach it
quietly and peep through as it opens beyond in a park in the forest.
Such a sight is rarely offered to human eyes. See that reptile over
twenty feet in length, a great round body twenty feet in circumference,
a short stubby tail. A small horse-shoe shaped head with horn sheathed
jaws, small but strong. Back of the head, are necklaces of bony scutes,
keeled down the center separated along their edges, by small nodules
of bone, that move on each other giving a mobility to the skin even
though the animal is as heavily armored as a fighting automobile of the
great European war of today. The tail, too, is covered with enormous
bony plates, though light and porous, compared with the dense bony
plates covering the body; the end is heavy and blunt, club-like in
fact. His pillar-like limbs are short and robust, to support such a
body. The belly almost reaches the ground, the heavy tail drags behind.
He moves along sluggishly, compared with the lighter horned dinosaurs
and carnivores. See how readily he beats a passage way through the
underbrush that borders the woods, and emerges into the open park. We
notice his huge proportions and unique appearance. He is completely
armored and sluggish in his gait. It does not seem that even the fierce
_Gorgosaurus_ of the everglades, the tyrant of this peaceful woods
would find a single vulnerable place open to attack. More likely if
he made the attempt he would simply whet his teeth on the glistening
armor that protected him, in vain. He might perhaps break off a tooth
or two, before he learned his task was a thankless one. We can even
imagine that he would be in danger himself if he carelessly approached
too near the tail. For a blow from the powerful club at the end would
break in his ribs.

As the strange saurian passes us we notice the large trail he makes
through the bushes as he moves on down into the meadow-like flat for
his breakfast.

See! Out there on the lake is a plesiosaur fishing, he evidently came
up the river (that heads in the bottom of the lake), from the Pierre
ocean not many miles away. We know the lake is full of sturgeon and
gar-pike. He has a beautiful head poised on a long swan-like neck, a
broad heavy body, and a very short tail. We have seen them before along
the shores of the old Cretaceous ocean. As his bones were common in the
chalk of Kansas. Within human history white whales have come up the St.
Lawrence river from the Atlantic Ocean. They have one in the Victoria
Memorial Museum at Ottawa, that made the trip once, but never returned,
and they dug his bones out of the flood plain of the river.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--_Chasmosaurus_ (_Ceratops_), George’s being
wrapped in quarry. Page 82.]

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--_Chasmosaurus_ Quarry. Page 82.]




CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT SPIKED DINOSAUR OF DEAD LODGE CANYON


On the 17th of September, 1913, George and I loaded our row boat and
motor boat with our tent, blankets, and cooking utensils and tools,
and start down the river in search of a new camp. In the photograph
of the scene, Levi is standing on deck of the flat boat and bids us
good-bye and good luck. George is driving the motor and I sit in the
center of the boat. Notice the row boat we trail behind, is heavily
loaded. This was the hardest trip we ever made with the motor boat,
as the water was low, we were constantly getting stuck on a sand bar.
They extended often across the river. George was one to suffer, as he
was the only one of the two that had the strength to pull it across
into deeper water. When we stuck fast, I got in the row boat and
paddled over to a deeper hole, and went a fishing, while he struggled
with his boat. It was a terrible experience, but well bought, as he
learned what the Red Deer river was in low water, and when he went on
it again, in 1915 he built himself a motor boat that would float in
five or six inches of water. While mine required eighteen inches to
float it. At last with George nearly exhausted, we pulled into shore
at “Happy Jack Ferry”, twelve miles below Steveville. We pitched our
tent on the southern side of the river. On the 19th of September, I
made the discovery of the strange spiked dinosaur, called by Mr. Lambe
_Styracosaurus_. The ground was wet with repeated showers. The fossil
beds are not safe then, as one slips as if walking on soft soap. There
is much clay in all the rocks; in fact more than half of them are made
up of clay, interlaid with silver gray sandstone, also containing much
clay. However, I could not be idle about camp and made the attempt
to get in the badlands walking up the bed of a long coulee that was
filled with boulders. I got to where it was extremely difficult,
as the bed was narrow and crooked. So I attempted to scale a steep
slope and got up a hundred feet; that brought me over a perpendicular
precipice, while above was a heavy bed of clay. I knew if I could get
over the clay, I would be all right, as I would then be on top of a
spur from the prairie, wide enough for me to walk on. However, the
minute I would drive my pick into the clay to hold me from slipping,
it would break loose and let me slip back to a narrow ledge above the
cliff. I attempted to cut a path with the same result, and as I saw I
could not go up, I resolved to go down the way I had gone up. This I
found was impossible; for if I sat down I would slide and be hurled
over the precipice. I then got frightened and attacked the steep clay
slope again, with the same results. I realized then if I could not
climb over when in my ordinary condition, certainly could not when
frightened. I therefore sat down on the narrow ledge until I recovered
my composure. And by careful searching the steep slope I had come up,
I found a little ditch with small bushes growing in it. It was washed
clean of mud, and I got a foothold in it, and gradually let myself
down into the bed of the coulee. I did not attempt to leave this again
and at last reached the head. Many other ravines headed near by, and
in going over to one of them I saw in the steep slope of a narrow
gorge, in gray sandstone, the skull that is rather poorly shown in the
picture. It was 200 feet below the prairie, and it required a great
deal of labor to collect and load it in the wagon. It was first packed
securely in a box, after it had been carefully wrapped in burlap dipped
in plaster, and secured with strong poles to hold it together. A road
was cut in the face of the cliff, and our faithful team hauled the box
weighing about nine hundred pounds, out of the ravine; they often fell
down and cut themselves, but they scrambled up the narrow road with
their burden fastened to a sled. When they got to the level prairie,
the boys let the hind wheels into the ground to the hubs and rolled the
box in. The skull was partially prepared by me the next winter as shown
in the photograph which gives a top view of it. This is one of the many
remarkable forms that were so abundant during the Mid-Cretaceous time.
The skull was over six feet in length, with a great horn-core over the
center of the nose, twenty-four inches high, and six inches in diameter
at the base. But stranger than all, six horn-cores radiating from
the crest behind where it is four and a half feet wide. The central
horn-cores are the largest, twenty-two inches long, the next pair
twenty, and the outermost fourteen inches wide. All these horn-cores
were covered in life with horn, lengthening them materially. The crest,
from between the center of the eye horns is four feet long, while the
portion of the skull in front is only two feet. The narrow bar that
carries the spikes behind, is narrow and heavy, thinned down with the
central and marginal bars to form large openings. The skull too, as
in _Chasmosaurus_ is dug out into caves. Only a thin septum of bone
separate the brain case from the central air chambers, there were no
attached orbital horns, but cup-like depressions, as if the horns had
dropped out, having been ossified from a separate center. All the
bones of the skull show vascular grooves, as if the entire skull was
sheathed in horn making an impenetrable shield. In the old restoration
of _Triceratops_ the neck is enlarged to fasten securely into the neck
frill or crest. To me such an idea is absolutely absurd. The round
occipital condyle enabled the animal to bend the head in any direction
at the atlas vertebra, as in the four limbed mammals of today, that
have to put down their heads to eat or drink. If the shield were
fastened to the neck the reptile would have to lie down to feed and
drink or go into the water, unless there was a similar arrangement
between the body and neck vertebrae. In the case of _Chasmosaurus_ or
_Ceratops_, where the crest reaches to the hips, the socket would be in
front of the hips, so when feeding on rushes he would have to kneel on
his front limbs and bend at the hips. A most remarkable arrangement.
Then, too, it would be of little use for a shield of defense against
his subtle carniverous enemy. No, I am sure the old idea in regard to
the neck frill is a mistake and I ask you to please go back with me and
I will show you the reptile alive.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--George preparing skull of _Chasmosaurus_ in
Laboratory. Page 83.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Skull of _Chasmosaurus_ restored by Weber.
Page 83.]

We find ourselves sitting in the shade of a giant red wood, for the sun
is up. The ocean far to the south, out of sight reveals its presence in
the salty refreshing air that reaches us. The land before us has been
slowly rising at the rate of deposition, and is but little above tide
water. Great meadows on the swampy flood plain of a large lake lie a
few feet below the bench, that is covered with a dense forest. Nature
has a wonderful workshop for the Creator, one continual plant, for
turning out perfect living forms endowed with life and power. Let us go
down toward the jungle of horse-tails, other rushes, and high grass,
that waves in the passing breeze. On the very margin of the lake itself
from the white sandy beach, we pick up teeth, and scattered bones, and
mussel shells. There is plenty of drift wood too, lying in heaps, left
there by the last flood. We wander on towards the plain. Hark! don’t
you hear a noise in the thick vegetation as if a heavy reptile was
cropping his morning fare? For reptile it must be, as only diminutive
marsupial-like mammals live at this time. If you will follow me, we
will see. So, without further ado, we walk into the rank vegetation,
and parting it, look down a narrow path along which a spiked dinosaur
is feeding. He is unconscious of our presence and is feeding towards
us. His powerful limbs of equal length, are sunk deep in the moist
earth. His head is in plain sight, and the crest stands up when he bent
it, to crop off a mouthful of succulent herbage with his heavy beak,
sheathed in horn. This he shears with his beveled teeth behind, very
much like the mechanism of an old fashioned hay cutter.

The teeth are double rooted, and in magazines like those of the
duck-billed dinosaurs, though not as numerous. The great horn is black
and polished, full three feet long, like the sharp spear point in the
shield of thick buffalo hide of a Philippian Warrior. The great spikes
stand out from the top of the crest when he lowers his head. Thus fully
armored he can force a passage way through the thickest vegetation,
beating it down beneath his feet. There are four hoofed toes on each
front foot, and three behind. The large restless eyes are buttressed
over with bone to protect them from his enemy, _Gorgosaurus_, the
tyrant of the everglades, and from the dense vegetation through which
he beats his way. As he passes us and stops to feed again, thus raising
his shield in the air, we get a splendid view of his scaled body,
with its colors harmoniously blended with the vegetation by which he
is surrounded. They are much like those already seen in _Ceratops_ or
Lambe’s _Chasmosaurus_. He seems satisfied with his breakfast, as he
lifts his head out of the rush covered soil. As a narrow neck of land
tongues out into the plain from the first bench, it seems that he is
headed to cross it into the jungle beyond. As he climbs out of the
plain, on to solid ground under the forest trees, we notice he is ten
feet in length to the drop of the tail, which is short, and he drags
the end on the ground. He stands at least six feet in height. As we
follow his moist spoor, we soon enter a small park covered with grass
and flowers. Suddenly, we hear the most blood curdling hiss, that
chills the marrow in our veins. What can it mean? The _Styracosaurus_
knows for he is instantly alert, lifting his head in the direction of
the sound, he drops it again, and stands at bay. With another blood
curdling hiss, a gigantic carnivore leaps into view, from a trail we
were following. Our spiked dinosaur stands rigid as if cast in bronze,
with the great nasal horn pointed towards his dreaded foe, and the
spikes frowning above, and protecting the vital organs, the great
cat-like reptile crawls stealthily forward. Don’t fear friends to watch
the combat. It is very terrible to see a blood thirsty tyrant slack his
thirst in the blood of his victim. He attempts to find a vulnerable
spot to strike with his powerful claw-armed hind foot, the claws of
hardened horn, sharp and recurved, each a foot in length and spreading
over half a square yard of surface. Or he would like to seize the
thinly covered abdominal walls, with his horrid teeth, lance-like that
fill the dentary and maxillary bones of the lower and upper jaws, that
are nearly three feet in length. With a gape of the mouth of nearly two
feet, the red gums, roof and floor of the mouth, with the great forked
tongue, present a terrifying appearance. But the spiked lizard is on
guard, and when his enemy makes a sudden dash at him, he presents his
impregnable head. In spite of his bulk, being much heavier than the
carnivore, he seems to revolve on a pivot, and the shield is where the
_Gorgosaur_ attempts to strike. The instinct of self defense is ever
present, in time of danger. Sometimes the herbivore makes a sudden
dash, and tries to horn the agile foe, or with open mouth tries to
bring his vise-like beak together in his enemies flesh. We watch the
combat with bated breath.

The seven horned brute is too much for the tiger of the glades; so,
thoroughly exhausted at last, he creeps off a side path to hunt an
easier prey. While our _Styracosaurus_ lumbers off into dense
foliage of the low lying plain.

“The Dead Lodge Canyon” below “Happy Jack Ferry,” some thirty miles
north of Brooks, Alberta, and but six miles from the new line from
Swift Current to Bassano, a short cut of the Central Pacific Railway,
is one of the most remarkable gorges on the continent. Not only because
it is the old burial ground of many forms of the dinosaurs that have
passed out of existence, leaving no descendents, but on account of its
scenic beauty. The silvery grey sandstones with their darker bands of
clay, is interstratified with a chocolate colored bed near the top,
rich in lignitic shales of an almost black color. The black streak can
be traced for miles, and in some places develops into a bed of soft
coal, that is mined by the farmers. The canyon is but little over a
mile wide, and about five hundred feet deep, the upper reaches being
composed of dark marine shales, called the Pierre here, but the same
beds in the Judith River country of Montana are called Bear Paw shales.

[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Sternberg’s Camp 3 miles below Steveville.
Page 104.]

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--The picture of _Styracosaurus_ in bottom of
gorge. Page 102.]




CHAPTER VIII

ON A TRIP TO THE JUDITH RIVER, MONTANA


Under orders from the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada,
Charlie and I left Brooks, Alberta, on an expedition to Montana,
for the purpose of studying the sequence of the rocks there, and to
compare them with those of Canada. Mr. D. B. Dowling, a Geologist
of the Survey, joined us at Coutts to do the stratigraphical work.
I cannot help, in this connection remarking, he was in addition to
his geological knowledge, the most genial companion I have ever been
associated with in camp, excepting, of course, that prince of good
fellows, the late Professor E. D. Cope of Philadelphia, with whom I
made the same trip in 1876. A complete story of that expedition is
recorded in “The Life of a Fossil Hunter.” At Coutts Mr. Dowling and
I went out to some rocks exposed south of town which appear to be the
true Eagle sandstone of Weed. A compact greyish and reddish sandstone
with strong lines of cross bedding. These lines are also lines of
cleavage. Above are some seventy feet of the Belly River Series, clays,
and fluted sandstones. On July 2nd we stopped at New Park Hotel, at
Great Falls, Montana. Not far from the depot; while here we took a
trolley ride out to the great smelter near the Falls of the Missouri,
three miles east. The works cover acres of ground and the smokestack is
said to be the largest in the world. The falls here were low and below
was a series of rapids. Whenever we chanced to catch a view of the
Missouri, on our trip east by the Great Northern we could see the river
for many miles, full of falls and rapids. At Benton I saw no sign of
old Fort Benton I visited with Professor Cope in 1876. We noticed along
the track the typical Fort Benton shales, dark colored below, yellowish
shales above, while unconformable masses of the ancient river bed
lined the faces of bluff and ridge or helped to fill the old ravines,
composed of unstratified yellowish clays, sand and gravel. The narrow
flood plain of the river is fringed with cottonwoods and poplars, with
birch and willow thickets, underbrush of wild roses, bull berries,
etc., with the ubiquitous sage brush everywhere. The Northern Pacific
passes through a rolling prairie north of the Bear Paw Mountains. In
1876 the only wagon road here was south of the mountains and it started
at Fort Benton the head of navigation, and ended at Cow Island, 120
miles east.

I noticed the farmers irrigating their gardens and alfalfa fields with
water drawn from the Missouri with buckets attached to overshot wheels,
on their turning the water was spilled into a trough connected with
the reservoir. It was carried from there, over the fields. We got off
the train at Big Springs, went to the Spokan Hotel, and registered
in the bar room, where they had the office at one end of the bar. I
thought that was going it some, excuse the slang, and that Montana
needed “Total Prohibition” pretty badly. The dining room opened off the
bar. At the livery stable we hired a team and democrat wagon for two
weeks for $50. In the afternoon we drove out in a buggy to the coal
mine eight miles southeast. Here the light yellowish sandstones with
harder parts were filled with thin circular concretions as flat as a
pancake. The vein of coal is about five feet thick at an angle of about
16 degrees. On either side are narrow beds of yellow sandstone dipping
in various directions, the strike being parallel with the Bear Paw
Mountains not far off to the south. Between the sandstone layers is a
dike of volcanic trap, black, and fine grained, pushed up through the
strata so it forms a hog back elevation above them. There are also beds
of light colored shales, with seams of iron-stone between.

On July 3rd, 1914, we drove to a flat near the site of a reservoir,
now dry, and stopped at a farmer’s. We had skirted the eastern limits
of the Bear Paw Mountains, passed through a rolling prairie, crossed
Eagle Creek, where a fine flow of water, full of little fishes, runs
over gravel and sand towards the Missouri river. As we journeyed south
we saw evidence of vulcanism in a narrow strip of naked rock that had
been shoved up in a wedge shaped mass through the grass of the prairie.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Top view of _Styracosaurus_ as prepared by
Charles H. Sternberg. Page 104.]

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Charlie’s _Centrosaurus_ in the rock. Page
122.]

On the Fourth of July we reached the ferry below the mouth of the
Judith River and took dinner at the ranch called Judith P. O. The
company own their own store, bunk-house, cook-house and stables, and
have in a great crop of alfalfa. They also own the ferry, and owing to
high water, the approach from the north was cut out, and we had to get
our horses on board the best way we could, and then pull on the wagon
by man power. We were kindly entertained at Judith. In the afternoon we
drove up to Dog Creek, where Professor Cope made his famous expedition
in 1876. The effects of vulcanism are seen on every side. The views I
show, fully illustrate this phase in the earth’s crust. The picture
with the white sandstone tipped up to the left, represents the Eagle
Sandstone with the Claggett Shales to the right. These shales should
be on top of the Eagle Sandstone. They closely resemble the Pierre
shales, below the Edmonton beds in Alberta, and contain the same
baculites, ammonites and plesiosaurs, evidently. The foreground of the
picture, shows part of the narrow Dog Creek valley covered with grass
and sagebrush, with a few cottonwoods in a bend of the creek. On the
opposite, or east side of the creek, we found a trail leading up to the
divide over the Claggett shales. These, Professor Cope called Fort
Pierre.

On July 24, 1914, a paper of mine appeared in “Science,” in which I
undertook to show that the Dog Creek beds were equal to the Edmonton
Beds of Alberta. And those at Cow Island, should be correlated with
the Belly River Beds of Alberta, with the Pierre shales between. I
took Professor Cope’s view. He believed the Judith River Beds were
above the Pierre and Fox Hills Group of the Cretaceous and called them
“The Judith River Beds” or “Cretaceous No. 6.” After two seasons of
exploration of the Belly river series in Dead Lodge Canyon, of Red
Deer River Alberta, in connection with our study of the Dog Creek and
Cow Islands rocks I was obliged to accept the conclusions of Hatcher
and Stanton, in their fine work on “The Geology and Paleontology of
the Judith River Beds.” The whole series here, and on Red Deer are
without doubt Ft. Pierre. The Judith River and Belly River beds were
local elevations above the Pierre Ocean. We actually added to the mass
of evidence to this effect, by the discovery of sixty feet of Bear Paw
Shale on top of the Judith River beds at Taffy Creek, a branch of Dog
Creek to the east. We also learned how easy it was for Hayden and Cope
to make the mistakes they did in their hurried survey of the badlands.
I walked miles over both Bear Paw and Claggett shales, and found it
difficult to tell them apart. Vulcanism has often lifted the older
beds higher than the more recent ones. The what seemed to us true, the
ammonites, baculites and plesiosaurs, were the same in the two marine
beds, though separated by the fresh water Judith River series, which is
of the same age as the Belly river beds.

We walked up the steep slope to the divide between the breaks of The
Missouri river and Dog Creek, this divide is nearly 600 feet above the
river. Somewhat different from what my memory had told me of these
great canyons. I speak of them as being over a thousand feet deep in
“The Life of a Fossil Hunter.” In 1876 we had no barometer to take our
altitude and my notes were lost in a fire in 1881, it is natural for
the mind to exaggerate depth and height as well as level surfaces.
However, as we made this trip by moonlight, and through the solemn
silence, I was again overcome with awe when I gazed into the stupendous
gorges and at the beetling crags that overlooked them. Hour after hour
we passed slowly along the trail, often only the narrow ridge between
two great canyons, and a balky team might have backed us off into the
abyss filled with inky darkness. Only a journey under such conditions
and in such a region of utter barrenness, can give the reader an idea
of the emotions that overpowered me. We made camp about midnight, and
the only sign of human habitations we saw, (except a deserted sheep
ranch), were the fireworks thrown into the sky at Kendall, where the
people were celebrating. We made a camp later, on an eastern branch
of Dog Creek, called Taffy Creek. We made a thorough study of this
region near camp. During our trip up Dog Creek we had made extensive
collections of invertebrate fossils from all the different horizons,
securing also _Myledaphus_, and other sharks teeth from the lower Eagle
Creek sandstones which, with the Claggett shales, form the lower beds
of the Belly River Series of Alberta. On the south side of Taffy below
a large timbered hog back upheaval, I found a locality in the Judith
river bed that is possibly the type locality from which Cope and I
secured our collections on that memorable expedition of 1876, when we
found the first of the horned dinosaurs (except loose teeth). A “blow
out,” as they call it in the west, had exposed along a narrow slope
of sandstone, many bones and teeth of horned, plated, duck-billed,
carniverous dinosaurs, with the teeth of _Myledaphus_, and many broken
turtle shells, as well as bones of _Champsosaurus_, scales of ganoid
fishes. Exactly like the numberless bone-beds along Dead Dodge Canyon.
What delighted me most of all was discovering the nearly complete
pelvic girdle, including the footed ischia, proving that these bones
belonged to a crested dinosaur like the one we found on Red Deer river
and was called _Stephanosaurus_ by Lambe and _Corythosaurus_ by Brown.
You will notice that we have two names usually for these Belly River
species. I try to credit each student as best I may, leaving it with
future scientists to decide which name should be retained in American
Paleontology. The Edmonton bone-beds, are very different, resembling
flotsam along the line of high tide, and are all deposited in brackish
water. These beds like those in Dead Lodge Canyon, were laid down
in fresh water. There were very few turtle shells in the Edmonton,
here they strew every exposure. Everywhere in this region were two
persistent layers of coal on top of the Judith river followed by the
Bear Paw Shales. Above the upper vein of coal, is a layer of oyster
shells from a few inches to four feet thick. In the Bear Paw shales
south of camp a mile, Mr. Dowling with the aid of a sheep herder, found
a new mosasaur, belonging evidently to the genus _Clidastes_, as the
chevrons were anchylosed to the centra of the vertebrae, and the tail
was expanded into a fin. The mandibles with teeth, some fifteen feet
of the tail and many dorsal vertebrae were found. We also secured some
very beautiful ammonites and baculites and bones of the plesiosaur
_Cimoliasaurus_. But for the uplift, the stratigraphical record is
quite simple, the puzzling strata tipped in all directions were easily
identified under direction of the skilled observer Mr. Dowling. It
would be impossible for any one on the ground to doubt the sequence of
the rocks here, as laid down by Hatcher and Stanton.

We followed the trail Professor Cope first made, when we drove down
to Cow Island in 1876, camping at the same spring at Lone Tree for
noon. The tree itself is now dead. We camped near our old one on the
Missouri, forty miles below Dog Creek, though now we had a wagon road
down through the badlands. On the road down along the badlands we never
lost sight of the rocks and always found the Bear Paw shales on top of
the Judith River beds, proving that I had been mistaken again, and the
Cow Island beds were the same, as those on Dog creek, with no rocks
between. The only difference I could see between them was the sculptury
approached more closely at Cow Island, those of the beds in the Dead
Lodge Canyon.

Two things impressed me strongly, one was the fact of finding an
ischium with a footed extremity, closely associated with teeth similar
to those Dr. Hayden picked up in this region, and Leidy called
_Trachodon mirabilis_. We found four trachodonts in the Dead Lodge
Canyon the most common was the crested one with footed ischia. And
not a one of them belonged to the genus _Trachodon_. Neither have
any been described. There can be little doubt therefore that Leidy’s
_Trachodon mirabilis_ belongs to a dinosaur with either a crested
head or the high nosed _Gryposaurus_ of Lambe, or _Kritosaurus_ of
Brown. Is _Trachodon_ a crested dinosaur? The evidence seems to point
that way. Then what is _Trachodon annectens_ of Marsh and the family
name? As Leidy used a tooth that may have belonged to three or four
different genera, it seems the early names from such poor material,
rests on shaky foundations. If the paleontologists begin to name only
complete skeletons, or nearly complete ones there will be a shaking up
of old names and many will go into the discard like so much of human
knowledge. Marsh had but little better foundation for his _Ceratops_.
A couple of horn-cores, that might have belonged to any one of half a
dozen genera of horned dinosaurs.

We spent two weeks of most delightful exploration in the Judith river
country, and my mind was set at rest, in regard to the position the
beds occupy in the building up of our continent.

On our return, we thought at one time, we would not be able to recross
the Missouri river, a flood had washed away the approaches to the ferry
boat. However, as “necessity is the mother of invention,” we hauled
our luggage on board by means of a row boat and dragged our wagon
through the mud by man power, the ranchers helping us for the fun and
excitement there was in it. Later, another man swam across with our
team, and we were ready to go north to our old field in Dead Lodge
Canyon, Alberta. This field we reached in safety.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Putting irons on the _Centrosaurus_ Crest.
Page 83.]

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--George at work on C. H. Sternberg’s
_Centrosaurus_. Page 83.]




CHAPTER IX

ANOTHER STRANGE HORNED DINOSAUR


In September, 1913 at the camp from which I discovered the spiked
Dinosaur, Mr. Lambe’s _Styracosaurus_, I found above our tent back in
the badlands in a perpendicular escarpment, a fine skull of another
strange horned dinosaur. Mr. Lamb called it _Centrosaurus_, while Brown
still holds the name Cope gave a similar genus he collected in the
Judith River Formation in 1876, namely, _Monoclonius_, of which genus
I discovered two species that were new at that time. This specimen I
discovered, was about two hundred feet above the river. The first work
was to build a platform around it on which I could stand, so I could
work around the specimen. Mr. Lambe, himself, found the type of this
genus, which consisted of a neck frill about 1898. In this specimen
of mine I found a large part of the skull. It was however, due to
Charles M. Sternberg’s patient labor, that science is in debt for a
perfect skull of this strange reptile. It was found the next year after
I found mine, in the Dead Lodge Canyon near its lower extremity. You
may think from my description of so many fine specimens that we had
an easy job of it. When George found his plated dinosaur, he had
thirty-five feet of solid sandstone to remove. He needed Charlie’s
assistance very badly. But I was determined, if possible that he, and
I too, each should find a specimen worth collecting. Our journey down
to Dog Creek, Montana, had given George some three weeks the start of
us in hunting, and he had been very successful. As every hunter likes
to tell of his companions luck in the field, so also he likes to have
trophies of his own. So we searched over miles and miles of badlands,
week after week I was completely exhausted at night, after a day’s
unsuccessful hunt. There is no work so trying, as that of clinging
hour after hour to steep ascents, and searching every inch of exposed
surface, in and out among the winding slopes. Often we would climb two
hundred feet or more to the head of a coulee, to find after going a
few rods, a land slide had taken down acres of shaken up strata. Then
we would either climb to the summit, and go around, or go down to the
bottom and climb up on the other side of the slide. In many places we
were obliged to use our picks, as our chief dependence, in walking
around some almost perpendicular escarpment, or to cut niches in which
to secure a treacherous foothold in the steep slopes. I know that when
I got to camp at night, and had set down to our camp table, to eat the
fine supper, Mr. Johnson had prepared for us, appetising indeed, as
he made bread and cakes and many other dishes not usually expected in
camp where pancakes and baking powder biscuits are the rule generally;
my feet would swell so badly I would often be obliged to crawl on my
hands and knees to my tent and cot. There, stretched at full length,
with lamp above me, I read until bed time, never thinking of getting on
my feet until the next day, when I went through the same experience.
Charlie, as I said was the lucky one, he found the most complete skull
of this strange creature we have ever obtained. The Figure 26, shows it
in its rocky sepulcher after it was uncovered ready for wrapping. In
order to get to it we were obliged to leave our wagon on the prairie,
and go down into a coulee some five hundred feet below; cross over, and
on a road we made, haul our sled to it a hundred feet above the river.
Although the skull is badly injured by pressure, it is so perfect that
all the sutures between the bones can be detected, as in the case of
the _Chasmosaurus_ skull, George discovered.

I was able to completely restore my specimen from Charlie’s. So we have
now mounted in the Hall of Vertebrates, two skulls. The picture No.
27 shows some of the characters quite well. The nasal horn is curved
forward, and there are two short horns over the eyes; while in my
specimen, Figure 27, there are none.

I would like to take you to my shop again; where George is at work.
He is putting on the steel half ovals, that are to hold up the crest;
he is using an electric drill as you notice, Figure 28, and boring
holes through steel and skull so the bolts can be inserted to hold
the crest securely to the skull. In the back ground is the inch tube
that holds the ends of the half ovals, and is the standard that will
support the skull, on the permanent base. It all looks very simple,
but it represents a great deal of skilled labor. The strip of half
oval steel that supports the crest, was heated hundreds of times
and beaten to fit inequalities in the surface of the crest. It must
fit exactly, so there is no spring in the steel, otherwise when the
plaster jacket that covers the top of the skull is removed, the spring
will break the bones. The jacket is made of separate sections fitted
closely to the top of the skull. It serves two purposes, that of giving
a firm, uniform base behind the bones, so they may be cleaned, and
also to enable us to turn the skull over by looping a rope over it,
fastening this to the triplex block that rides on a trolley moving on
the eye-beams fastened to the ceiling. The skull (Fig. 28), is then
gently lifted, turned over, and the upright set in the permanent base
of polished mahogany. Then the jacket should lift off, as in the case
in hand. After cleaning the upper surface, the skull is ready, as
you see it, for permanent exhibition (Fig. 27), with the exception
that the glass case so necessary to protect it from dust, and vandal
fingers has not yet been put in place. It took all four of us, many
months to complete this skull for exhibition. I worked on it nearly
all one winter cleaning off the bog iron that covered it completely. If
you will notice closely the rough skull, especially with a glass, you
will see the bones were fractured in all directions. The first thing
I had to do, was to fasten these fragments securely in their places,
so I could remove the iron rust that clung firmly to them. After many
experiments with shellac, I found a thin solution of ambroid was the
most satisfactory. It would penetrate better than shellac, and when
dry, was hard as the flinty rock itself. If any of the fragments broke
loose under the tools I used, I must fill them again and again and wait
twenty-four hours or more for the cement to set firmly. You will notice
the lower jaw and crest seem rather smooth compared with the rest of
the skull, and they are, because they are restored in plaster, from the
complete skull Charlie found. The crest was chiefly prepared by Levi.
This was done while it was still in the plaster jacket. It was first
restored in moulding wax, copying exactly the perfect crest. I mean by
that, the wax on the jacket was manipulated by my son until it was a
facsimile of the original parts so as to be beyond criticism. Then a
cast was made in plaster of the wax model, the wax taken away, and the
place it occupied replaced with plaster colored as near the original
color of the bone as possible, to prevent a discord, or lack of harmony
in the completed skeleton. You see, then, we must be more than fossil
hunters; and I must say though I have collected fossils nearly every
year since 1867, and as my readers who have read my story know, have
often suffered in the field, it all sinks into insignificance compared
with the work of preparing the material for public exhibition. Take
the skull I am describing from 9 in the morning, with an hour’s
intermission at noon, until 5 p.m. I must have perfect control of
myself, I must not make a mistake, or I may ruin the entire skull.
That not only represents a great deal of expense, but is largely the
result of a lifetime spent in a business to which I was born; without
that experience and that of my sons, through most of their lives,
in all likelihood, we could never have discovered or collected it.
Then we do not work for today alone. As long as the Victoria Memorial
Museum stands, this and the other Red Deer Dinosaurs we collected, and
prepared, will be admired. It is because men will forget the worker in
their admiration for these strange relics of a day some three million
years ago, that I am going so exhaustively into detail, the life of
a fossil hunter in field and shop, so that the observing public,
when they go through one of our great museums may feel they are on
holy ground. The creatures of the misty past are before them; God’s
creatures, for if he cares for the raven, for the fall of a sparrow,
he must have cared for the creatures of his hand, that existed so many
ages before man appeared--these lords of creation, that domineer over
God’s green earth.

Look at the picture again, and you will notice two long spike-like
projections over the openings in the crest. They are evidently not
horn-cores, but bundles of ossified tendons, over which the muscles
intertwined, that controlled the powerful lower jaw. The entire skull
is over five feet long. Two horn-cores bend inward in the center of
the crest behind, and the rounded sides are sculpted into bony knobs
that in life were doubtless covered with horn. This creature must have
been as large as the spiked dinosaur nearly--at least nine feet long to
the drop of the tail, although I did not discover any skin impression
similar to that in _Chasmosaurus_, the environment was the same boggy
swamps and mossy meadows, his skin scales were colored to harmonize
with his surroundings. He would not be noticed when asleep in some
rushy embrassure, and when feeding, he was ever alert, ready to flee
from his enemy _Gorgosaurus_, or if need be face him and fight it out,
as we saw the spiked dinosaur along the margins of the cretaceous lake.




CHAPTER X

IN THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY


Charles M. Sternberg went ahead of my expedition to Milk River Station
in southern Alberta, exploring on horseback a great stretch of country
along the Milk River divide, and east seventy miles, or more, where
the great gorge of Milk River cuts a gash five hundred feet into the
Belly River Series. Levi and his assistant Gustav Lindblad, also went
ahead, and secured our team and outfit from near Drumheller, Alberta,
and made the long journey by wagon, so when I reached Milk River
Station, I found both boys waiting for me. From Charlie’s report I
became convinced that we had come into barren ground. I also found
that the so-called Belly River Series of Dawson, who likened it to “an
island in sea of drift” was not on Canadian soil, but in the Black Foot
Agency Reserve in Montana, where Mr. Gilmore, of the National Museum
had discovered new trachodonts, and horned dinosaurs. As I had no
authority to visit and collect in this rich field I was obliged to give
it up. I was so near, and yet owing to red tape, so far, from a field
I had come to explore; expecting to find it on as Mr. Dawson believed,
Canadian soil. I have since learned from Mr. Brown, the Associate
Curator of Reptiles in the American Museum, and the man I consider the
greatest collector of extinct reptiles, that these exposures belong
to the Edmonton Series of which we have such splendid exposures on
the Red Deer River, in Alberta. This fact has greatly lessened the
disappointment. However, as misfortune never comes alone, a thorough
exploration of the exposures of Milk River, Alberta, revealed the fact
that they too, were quite barren of vertebrae fossils. On the afternoon
of the eighth of June, 1915, with all my party together, we drove down
to Verdegris coulee, twelve miles east of Milk River Station. It is
a comparatively wide valley, rather barren of vegetation. There is a
large lake named in honor of the Deputy Minister of the Department of
Mines, Mr. R. G. McConnell, a short distance above camp, on the coulee.
There are rather extensive exposures, along the slopes that lead up
from the valley to the prairie a hundred feet above. The lower reaches
are purple, yellowish, and reddish clays, and sand into which one sinks
while walking. Above is yellowish sandstone that stands out in bold
escarpments in places, it is washed into steep slopes. In this coulee
I found some fine leaf impressions--Platanus, Poplar, and a splendid
palm, shaped like a date palm. The fine palmetto palms, I found above
the Lance Beds in Wyoming, were fan-shaped. These, however, have long,
lance-shaped leaflets from a common central stem. I described it to
Dr. F. H. Knowlton, of the U. S. Geological Survey last winter, and he
has never seen anything like it. It is evidently new to science. From
a letter received lately I have learned our suppositions were correct.
This is the first Palm of this kind seen by men of science from the
Cretaceous Age.

At the mouth of Verdegris Coulee, Charlie photographed some remarkable
fine rock forms carved out by nature. The photograph showing the
urn-shaped mass, was formed by a sand blast operated by the winds, that
whirled around the mass that had been separated from the main rock in
the recession of cliffs. The top layer being harder than the rest, it
was corroded more slowly than the lower and softer layers, producing
the wonderful urn. The sand and wind polishing and planing away the
rock, as effectually as if had been a broom stick under the action of a
lath. I think this one of the most beautiful designs of nature I have
ever seen. The second picture Charlie thinks resembles an “Egyptian
Sphinx.”

On the 12th of June we reached our camp in the valley of Milk River.
In the very center of the exposures, some three miles above where it
crosses the International Line, and flows towards the Upper Missouri,
in Montana. On the 15th my notes record that I had gone over the
entire series of rocks from top to bottom, finding only a few isolated
crumbling bones of dinosaurs, of the Belly River Age. The first two
hundred feet (speaking approximately, as I had no instruments of
precision), of the exposures are chiefly clay, with oyster shells
scattered through them; also on top, quite a layer of oyster shells in
a yellowish sandstone, filled with iron. Just above are two persistent
layers of coal, or very black bituminous shales. One vein, I concluded,
must have been between two and three feet thick. There are places where
this vein has been worked by farmers, evidently, from the prairie
above. As the coal is seventy miles from the railway at Medicine Hat,
it is not likely anyone will be found to work it extensively. Above
the coal are heavy strata of yellowish or grey clays, with intervening
beds of greyish and yellowish sands. On the summit of the badlands are
huge concretions, weighing many tons, each lying in yellow sand. In
this sand, too, I found the best prospect for fossil bones I have seen
in the region. I found a perfect femur of a trachodont running under
one of these heavy concretions. Owing to the fact that where there
were no concretions, the sand disintegrates so easily, grass and other
plants always take possession and cover the sand. So if there are any
skeletons here on Milk River they are covered up.

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--_Centrosaurus_ discovered by Charles H.
Sternberg. Page 123.]

Above the coal veins for about three hundred feet there are beds
composed largely of mussels and univalves, showing that great piles of
them were heaped in drifts along the ancient shore.

We could have secured tons of these shells, that to all appearances
might have died yesterday. Many had the original shell with its
pearly lustrous layer attached to the inner cast of mud that filled
the shells. Usually, however, when a shell was disturbed it fell
off and left the cast in my hands. I learned many things about this
great exposure. All the various rocks show they have been laid down
under water. I can imagine a great flood plain along the cretaceous
ocean at first, just below the surface of the water, that must have
been brackish at first for so many oyster shells to accumulate.
There were no great reed and rush covered plains where the horned
dinosaurs could feed; no bayous or lakes bordered with dense jungles of
vegetation, where countless swimming duck-bills enjoyed the luxurious
feeding places, but a shallow waste of waters, where oysters secured
a precarious foothold. Then the scene changed. The land was raised
sufficiently so a rank vegetation of sponge-moss and other forms
covered all the rising land until a vast bed of vegetable matter had
accumulated, when it went below the sea and was covered with ocean mud
and eventually compressed into coal. Then again the land was lifted
above high tide, fresh water for many years spread out in shallow
sheets over the region in which there was sufficient moss and other
vegetation to provide food for the univalves or gastropods, and a
multitude of mussels plowed through the muddy sand.

We had so much rain that we were not only delayed, but feared we would
never be able to pull our load of baggage out on the prairie. The
road we used to get into the valley, made by farmers, was impassible
when wet. I became very much discouraged, as there is no harder work
for a fossil hunter than to walk day after day over barren ground.
Professor Cope once sent me in on a hypothetical fossil hunt. He had
decided in his own mind in Philadelphia, that above the Permian beds of
Texas there was a new horizon that would yield new extinct animals, he
wanted to be the fortunate discoverer of the new fauna. I had, however,
explored this region years before, for the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I knew it was barren. Owing,
however, to his insistence, I yielded my judgment to his, to my cost,
and spent a month of useless effort, heart breaking indeed. That
was the last time he ever attempted to give me instructions from
Philadelphia when I was in the field.

On the 25th of June, after exploring the Milk river country, and
finding it barren, we camped on our way back to the rich Red Deer
River beds at a point fifteen miles south of Medicine Hat. We had
just pitched out tent when a violent wind storm as bad as the winds
of Kansas, struck us, accompanied with rain. We escaped serious
trouble, but a little town west of Medicine Hat was badly wrecked,
where the wind developed into a genuine cyclone that tore down houses
and scattered chimneys and loose boards over the prairie. Thanking God
for our escape we passed north next day. At Medicine Hat I went ahead
by train and left the boys to follow with the wagon. From Brooks I
went over to Steveville. On reaching the river, however, I found it
was at full flood and covered with driftwood, logs and hewn timber.
The ferryman, Mr. Shaw, came over for me in a row boat, and I had so
much confidence in him as a river man that I trusted myself to his
keeping. His skill with the oar brought me safely over the raging Red
Deer River. He avoided all the logs and other driftwood, and landed
me in safely on the northern shore. Even then I found the river had
backed water up the creek between the ferry and Steveville, and I had
to walk a long ways to get above the backwater. After quite a journey
I reached the hospitable hotel of Steve Hall. It was a full week before
the boys reached me and we got once more into camp. They were delayed
by the high water.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Limb of _Gorgosaurus_ Mounted by Charles M.
Sternberg, Page 58.]




CHAPTER XI

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS


For days I had been exploring the brakes of the Red Deer river in
Alberta, Canada, for the wonderful extinct dinosaurs of the Cretaceous
Period. They had only been known since 1876, when the late Professor
E. D. Cope made his famous expedition to the Bad-Lands of the Upper
Missouri, in the beds of the Judith River of Montana.

I was exploring the valley of the Red Deer River at Drumheller. A great
chasm in fact, cut by the river and its tributaries four hundred feet
deep into the Edmonton Series of the Upper Cretaceous, out of the very
heart of the prairie. Across from plain to plain the distance averages
about two miles. Tributary creeks and coulees have carved trenches
further back into the plain; while in the main valley, especially
near the brink of the prairie, are long ridges, table lands, buttes
and knolls, pinnacles and towers, whose bases often impinged on the
ox-bows of the river itself; down whose rugged sides a stone rolling
would bring up in a sudden halt, in the waters four hundred feet below.
All this region, except of course the river channel and flood plain,
was transformed by nature’s sculptury into fantastic badland scenery,
the rocks carved into the most intricate patterns, entirely devoid of
vegetation, except, perhaps, along the northern slope of some rounded
bluff, where sponge-moss had secured a precarious foothold; while
running through it were trailing junipers, and spruces, with flowers of
many a hue (to delight the eye) after searching the steep and barren
slopes for hours. These slopes were covered with cherty fragments
that rolled under the feet, threatening to hurl the adventurous
Fossil Hunter into the gorge below. I had found great quantities of
the bones of the huge dinosaurs, or “terrible lizards.” Among them
the trachodonts or duck-billed dinosaurs, were the most common. Great
swimming lizards they were, spanning thirty feet or more in length. My
party had already two skeletons. One of them thirty-two feet long, we
mounted afterwards in the Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, Ontario.
We found quarry after quarry where the bones had been piled up as
flotsam by some ancient tide, that for ages had ceased to beat on this
land. Today the nearest ocean is 700 miles away, and the strata have
attained an altitude of twenty-five hundred feet above sea-level. The
day had been hot and sultry; as I came upon a coal miners tunnel (there
are unlimited beds of coal in these breaks), I found relief by going
in some distance. The floor was deeply covered with fine dust, making
a restful place; and it is little wonder I fell asleep; I never knew
how long I slept, but when I awoke, I was overpowered with surprise, I
could not tell whether I had awakened in eternity, or Time had turned
back his dial, and carried me back to the old Cretaceous Ocean. At
all events however, I found myself lying under a great redwood tree.
Stretching before me to the south as far as the eyes could reach, a
mighty ocean lay as level as a thrashers floor to the distant horizon,
while to the north an interminable forest on the lowlands, interspersed
with countless lagoons and bayous, the oozy margins thickly planted
with rush and horse-tail, and tall swamp grass, while vast quantities
of moss clogged the shore. East and west, the shore line was undulated
by indentations, cut by river or bayou mouth, promontory cape and
bay. The heat was excessive, and it was a relief to find shelter
under one of these gigantic evergreens whose branches waved above the
everglades; deep rooted in the soil, it had already endured the blasts
of a thousand years. Perhaps this mighty giant had witnessed many a
tidal wave leap the borders of old ocean, and plunge with resistless
fury over the lowlands, uprooting trees of weaker fiber, sweeping a
waste of peat and wood out to sea, to be returned in mingled masses
of vegetation to clog the shore. Its last year’s cones and leaflets
lay on the ground around me, and put me in mind of the locality I had
discovered but yesterday, where hundreds of cones and leaflets of the
giant sequoia or redwood lay deeply buried in the flinty rocks of the
badlands of the Red Deer river.

Like all noble scenes of nature the mind cannot at once grasp them
fully, if it ever does.

The south wind had sprung up, the tide was rising, the waves were
curling as they rolled on the beach: higher and higher they came capped
with white foam. As far as the eyes could reach, long lines of breakers
heaped tons of water on the shore, lashed by the frowning tempest.
The sublimity of the scene was heightened by the colors in the west,
that flecked the horizon with bars of gold and crimson; while the
sun, a globe of fire, sank to rest in old ocean. I was lying beneath
the tree breathing the salted air, partly in a trance. Is this real?
I asked myself. Is the wind really sighing among the branches of the
trees, that sheltered me? sounding like music of an aeolian harp,
the tracery of interwoven leaflets acting as if they were stretched
invisible wires? Is this a dream or reality? How often in other days
while searching the semi-arid fossil beds of the west, in my day dreams
have I put life in the old dry bones; how often some stately dinosaur
has passed before my mental vision. The forests, the rivers, the lakes
and oceans of other days, have appeared as if they actually existed. Is
it incredible then, that I should be transported across three million
years, the distance between the living and the dead? “How fleet is a
glance of the mind; compared to the speed of its flight, the lightning
itself lags behind, and the swift winged arrows of light.” Yes! modern
science claims that three million years have sped away since the end
of the Age of Reptiles, since the Dinosaurs perished from the earth.
Yet I was here. I could not doubt my own senses. I saw in the east
the Queen of Night rise slowly from the bosom of old ocean, while to
the west the last streak of departing day, glimmered once more and
disappeared. Overhead the constellations of the temperate zone shone
in undimmed splendor, as they did last night above the Albertian
plains. Yes! there to the north was the Great Dipper; its pointers
as of yore, still led my eyes to the North Star. Venus too, shone as
the “Star of the evening, beautiful star.” Who knows but some tiger
of the everglades, some huge Carniverous Dinosaur, may be prowling
about for prey. A Fossil Hunter might prove a rare tidbit to him. It
were better in my unprotected condition to seek a place of safety. I
noticed that some of the bushes that lined the thick jungles around me
had long powerful thorns, while running vines, had fibers as tough as
hemp. I had my collection bag still with me, with its chisels, knives
and small hand pick. So quickly cutting some long thorns and binding
them to my shoes with the vines, I sought a small tree, the crown of
which was hidden among the lower branches of the redwood. I climbed
by forcing the thorns into the bark of the tree, around which my
arms were clasped, and I ascended with the same ease that a linesman
climbs a telegraph pole, driving the sharp steel spikes fastened to
his boots into the wood. When I got among the lower branches of the
huge tree one hundred feet above ground, I crawled down to its juncture
with the trunk where I found an airy chamber, its floor covered with
dried leaves. Stretching myself at full length upon this fragrant
bed, I offered up my evening prayers to my Father in heaven, knowing
that I was being guided by His hand. Ah! had he not led me through
the wilderness for forty years in His cemeteries of Creation, among
the countless creatures of His hand. My mind took me back to the many
forms, I had recovered, and saved from the destroying agencies of time
and the vandal hand of man. I remembered I had eighty-five distinct
species of extinct life in Munich Bavaria where the late distinguished
Paleontologist Dr. von Zittel had once written me that I “had erected
in Munich an immemorial monument to my name.” I thought of the hundreds
of species I had discovered that now helped form the great Cope
Collection in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, that
great storehouse of American fossil vertebrates. I thought too of my
collection in the British Museum, and in the Museums of Berlin and
Paris. Surely they prove that God has cared for me while I was “about
my Father’s business.” I need not worry I thought, because forsooth
He had carried me back to the close of the Cretaceous, that wonderful
Age of Reptiles when land and air and sea were filled with, to us,
strange forms of life; when great lizards shook the earth with their
majestic tread, sea serpents and great bony fishes ruled the sea, while
huge flying reptiles flapped their leathery wings over the deep. When
I thought of all the creatures I had hunted for forty years, and dug
their mouldering skeletons from an old ocean bed a thousand miles from
the existing seas, from some great lake bottom, or the flood plain of
an ancient river. I asked myself: Will He who brought me here leave me
to suffer and to die? How often he had rescued me from sudden death.
Shall I fear to lay me down to sleep alone with Him in this land never
seen before by mortal eyes. Oh no! So peacefully I laid me down to rest
humming Scott’s famous lines:

    “The heath this night shall be my bed,
    A bracken curtain for my head.
    My lullaby the warders tread,
        Far, far from love and thee, Mary.”

And so I fell asleep. No rude sounds disturbed; when the morning sun
streamed in my eyes I awoke refreshed for the thrilling adventures of
the day. It was spring, every living thing throbbed with life, the sap
was surging through the trees arrayed in their brightest tints, the
ground below was carpeted with flowers in endless variety and hue:
there a clump of evergreens, and here one of poplars, while in the
distance figs, magnolias and a wealth of other trees added beauty and
variety to the redwood forest.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--Quarry of George’s Plated Dinosaur. Page 88,
96 to 99.]

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Packing up at Loveland Ferry, 1915. Page 140.]

Inshore the fertile zone between low and high tide swarmed with
oysters, clams and mussels. They covered every available inch of space
in the caves and crannies carved out of the ledge of sandstone along
the beach by the ceaseless ebb and flow of the sea, or when the waves
were driven by the tempest’s lash. As I had gone without supper the
night before, I felt very hungry. Rapidly descending my tree I ran
to the beach and gathered handfuls of the luscious shells, dripping
with salt water. With steel digger used in collecting fossils I opened
enough to appease a ravenous appetite.

The jungles behind seemed impenetrable, so I walked to the edge of the
bayou, which emptied into the sea nearby. It was thickly planted with
moss and rushes: but for the fact that there were logs everywhere,
lying at all angles in the morass I could not have gotten to the
water. By teetering across the yielding moss, and resting on the half
submerged logs, I reached the sullen stream. I soon concluded that I
must construct a boat, in order to explore the wonderful everglades.
From the log I had a fine view of the bayou that wound its way through
moss and swamp grass several feet high. The bayou expanded into lakes
of considerable size, bordered everywhere with the redwood forest, and
other trees on the rising land. With thick underbrush and high grass
beneath, I noticed the water was full of gar-pike and turtles, the
latter having beautifully sculptured shells, some of them a couple of
feet in diameter. Among them I noticed the beautiful Trionyx, the shell
marked with lovely designs. I remembered how, when on Professor Cope’s
Expedition to Montana in 1876, I was carried away with delight when I
gathered from a sandstone bluff fragments of these shells belonging to
the Judith River Beds of the Upper Missouri. But here were the living,
breathing animals themselves; so oblivious of my presence that they
crowded on the very log on which I was standing. Man’s cruelty to
animals had not caused them to fear the human eye; an abundant food
supply prevented viciousness. When I attempted to catch one, however,
they all glided gracefully off into the water. Whole schools of gars
and other fishes darted here and there in full view.

Turning back to the oyster bed, and searching along shore for a
suitable piece of drift wood with which to make a boat, in the flotsam
that lined the shore, I also found mingled with the driftwood and
shells, moss and sea-weed, countless bones of dinosaurs, not brittle
and filled with rocky material, as were those I found on Red Deer river
yesterday, but bones with flesh and sinew still adhering to them,
carried out as toll to the sea, from bayou or river. But the ocean
soon tired of them and after playing with them until the time of high
tide, returned them to the land with her own shells, seaweeds, and dead
fishes, to fester in the sun.

These bones showed me they had lived but a few days before, and
were perhaps the remains of the feast of some titanic carnivore. I
determined to go on a hunt for them. Here were limbs of duck-bills
ten feet in length, together with the strong ligaments that bound the
bones together in life. Here, too, the mighty Triceratops has left a
monstrous head, seven feet in length, to mingle with the drift.

The Carnivores were represented by powerful feet with three great
claws, and a spur like a rooster. The feet along measured over three
feet long, the horny claws measured ten inches. Crocodilian bones and
those of small reptiles and fishes lay around.

But as I was determined to find a log of the right size to hew into a
boat, I wandered on, searching the drift pile with eager eyes. I could
not be idle, and was determined to take advantage of the opportunity
offered me, to study these wonderful creatures of a far-away day. I
wondered whether they would in life prove what the students of their
remains in the Twentieth Century supposed. I longed to know.

At last, after much effort, I found a redwood trunk over twenty feet
long with a large enough diameter to make a comfortable dug-out.
Luckily it was just above high tide, near the mouth of a bayou. With my
hand pick I cut off the bark and fashioned bow and stern. Fortunately
I had some matches in my vest pocket, I built a fire against the
huge hollow trunk of a redwood, and was careful not to let it go out
entirely.

Along the shore, washed up by the tide from the sandstone ledge, were
numerous iron concretions, usually round and flattened on two sides.
These proved invaluable. They would get red-hot in my fire, and I
used them for burning out the boat. A flake of flinty rock served as
a shovel when fastened into a split stick, and two tied together at
the ends made a serviceable pair of tongs. With these simple tools, my
work proceeded famously. Paddles and scull, too, I made from strips
of strong and pliable young poplars. With my fire kept burning, I had
no trouble about food. I had always been a meat lover, and in camp a
breakfast without bacon was a failure. So instead, I made turtle soup,
or broiled fishes on the coals, or on sharp sticks before the fire. I
found nuts, too, and fruit, especially figs, the old ripe fruit hanging
among the flowers and green figs. From tough bark I made sails and put
sheets over all, to keep out the damp. With ropes of the aralia vine,
I fastened my dug-out to a tree. One stormy night a very high tide
floated her, and the next morning I was ready for my expedition. So,
all aboard, I committed myself to Him who hears “the ravens’ clamorous
cry,” and drifted with the tide up the center of the bayou. With scull
in hand, I guided my boat and with my eyes drank in the beauty of the
scene. It was a lovely morning cool and refreshing, the air laden
with the spicy fragrance of evergreens that lined the elevated bench
inshore. The delicious aroma of spring flowers delighted the senses,
while acres of water lilies with kidney shaped leaves and white and
yellow flowers rested in graceful attitudes upon the water. Along the
shore line were dense masses of moss; while serried ranks of rushes and
long grass cast waving shadows athwart the sluggish stream. Behind on
the solid earth the stately redwood, poplars, magnolia, figs and many
other trees, cast their shadows across the bayou. These splendid forms

  Of God’s first temple reared,
    Whose lofty trunks, like soldiers file
  As if their God they feared.

There they stand in solemn grandeur. Near the shore was a thick growth
of underwood, while inland clear spaces were visible owing to the fact
that the close crowned heads of the forest prevented the rays of the
sun from passing through them to the ground below, and nothing but
the humble moss and other lowly vegetation could secure a foothold.
I noticed suddenly a disturbance up stream, and suspecting that a
dweller of this solitude was approaching a specially seductive patch
of rushes and horse-tails across the stream, I backwatered my boat
into the fringe of vegetation near the eastern shore, until it was
completely hidden in an ambuscade of verdure. I anchored by means of
a large concretion attached to a rope, of the running vine already
mentioned. Carefully crawling to the front of the boat where I had made
a small deck, I stretched at full length, and parting the rushes had
an uninterrupted view of the bayou. Soon, I saw the white foam ripple
off the huge back and tail of a swimming reptile. A duck-bill if you
please, that was rapidly approaching. The huge elongated head and
short front webbed feet, the great body, and enormous swimming tail,
the last as long as the entire body, made up a total length of about
thirty-five feet. The tail was nearly three feet high, where it left
the body, terminating in a small point over sixteen feet away. It was
the main propeller that hurried him on his way to his pasture ground,
in graceful and powerful undulations, aided by his paddle-like front
limbs, feet and great hind limbs ten feet long. The water gurgled, and
foamed, little patches of foam, were caught up by the passing breeze
and carried to leeward. Soon he passed at full speed within ten feet
of my shelter, and brought up a hundred feet away under the western
shore. There he planted his hind feet firmly in the muddy bottom, ten
feet below. The water continued its sullen flow, murmuring against the
pillar-like limbs. The webbed front limbs, he used as arms to bring the
rich foliage within reach of his duck-bill to be nipped off, and passed
between the scissor-like teeth that sheared the food into shreds, to
pass into a cavernous stomach below, and so appease a ravenous appetite.

I had a fine view of the beautiful creature. Back of the head a
frill several inches high reached to the shoulders. The whole body
was covered with the most beautiful patterns of scales, or rounded
tubercles, arranged in mosaic-work of very pretty rosettes, of scales
perhaps an eighth of an inch in diameter with small tubercles between.
The morning sun reflected in the water every scale and contour of the
body, limbs and out stretched tail. And so this creature of other days
was before me in flesh and blood and power. Over some parts of the body
there were areas of large pavement scales. They were entirely distinct,
and did not overlap.

  And his body broad expended
  With thin skin is covered o’er,
  Scaled in beauteous patterns blended
  With the foliage near the shore.

The bright rosettes were more highly colored than the smaller dots. As
the thin skin hung loosely on the frame below, it moved in graceful
curves rounded muscles, massive hind limb, and great tail. The hind
limbs terminated in three large hoofs on each foot; that spread well
over half a square yard of the muddy bottom. The tail was adorned with
large colored scales. He is now in his natural habitat, the Everglades
along the old Cretaceous Ocean. The land was beginning slowly to rise
from the domain of Neptune, who had held sway for ages, but even now,
it was but slightly above sea-level, while meandering bayou, river
or lake were interspersed between the lowlands. There were great
accumulations of peat, and other rank vegetation covering great areas
of swamp-land, to the depth of thirty feet or more. Often no doubt, a
great tidal wave will flood the rising land, covering the vegetation
with ocean mud, which in due time, in the ages to come, will form under
pressure the coal fields of Alberta Province. We have already noted her
wealth of coal.

Our trachodon has finished breakfast, and though at the time of writing
these lines no one had suggested a name for him, the great question
with me was how continue the study of this beautiful lizard, learn more
of his life history and of the other creatures of his day. I concluded
the rich everglades would abound in many of his kind, and a rich fauna
too, including many other forms. As he continued to feed I continued
to think. I was not surprised to see him alone, because reptiles as
a rule care little for their fellows. They do not mass together in
herds like mammals. Each one seems to live for himself, the stronger
ones winning in the battle of life. They seem to have none of the
almost human sensibilities of mammals, show little love if any for the
offspring. As soon as the young are large enough for food, in the case
of flesh eaters, their hungry parents may gobble them up, and they are
no safer from them, than any others of the hungry tribe. The only way
to escape is to keep out of the way. Of course our trachodont is, as
we have already seen, herbivorous in habit; and is not likely to do
battle, except in self defense, from jealousy, or over the food supply.
Neither would he lead others to the feast, each one must look out for
himself.

I was not surprised that this fellow was a swimmer. In 1908 my oldest
son George, found a skeleton of a trachodon in the famous Beds of
Converse County, Wyoming, complete except that the tail and hind feet
were missing. He lay on an old drift on his back, wrapped in his skin,
as in a mantle, or rather the impression of his skin, for the original
substance had long ago disappeared. His head lay twisted under his
left shoulder. The skin in the abdominal region had collapsed, and
lay across the inside of the vertebral column, all going to prove he
had died in the water, that he was filled by the expanding gases
after death, that his body was lifted to the surface and floated with
the current, thus forcing the head back under the shoulders. When
the gas escaped, the abdominal walls fell in; the water rushed in to
fill the cavity, the body became heavier than water, and sank to the
bottom. There the fine sand drifted over it, and forced the yielding
skin deeper into the body cavity. The decay of the contents of the
viscera and the flesh occurring more rapidly than the skin, the latter
was forced closer and closer to the bones until the specimen, as now
mounted in the American Museum New York, shows a resemblance to a
mummy. So Dr. Osborn in describing it suggested the name “Dinosaur
Mummy.” Before this discovery, it was supposed that the reptile was a
land animal, that he used his powerful hind limbs in connection with
the tail, to form a tripod on which his powerful weight rested, while
he fed off the tender foliage of tree. It was also believed that he was
plated with dermal, or skin scutes, to protect him from his carniverous
enemies. However as the “mummy” proves, and as the living creature
proved, his skin was thin, with no dermal plates. His front feet were
webbed, and his habitat the bayous and swamps along the sea-plain.
I was glad, as my saurian was through breakfast to see him lift his
body, head and front limbs up, and look towards shore, and beyond a
few rods away, to a sheet of water that appealed to him. So wading
through the morass and putting his small front feet down on the muddy
slope left by the retreating tide, the narrow strip between its ebb
and flow, he drew himself out of the water, and lifting his body but a
few feet above the mud, he dragged his huge tail through it, leaving a
well marked trail behind. His pose to me was very interesting, as I had
come to the conclusion from my study of the “mummy,” that this was his
natural gait, though most American Paleontologists believe, that their
usual pose was standing erect on the hind limbs, the front legs used
chiefly for balancing. As he reached the fringe of bushes he pushed his
duck-bill through them, nosing around as if to scent some enemy. Then
as the coast seemed clear, he hurries across the narrow strip, beneath
the silent evergreens.


[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Badlands of Red Deer River, 2 miles below
Steveville. Page 67.]

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Badlands near Steveville. Photograph by Levi
Sternberg. Page 61.]

  The cooling touch of morning breeze,
  Waft incense from a censor hidden,
  The gentle sighing of the trees
  Add music to the scene unbidden.
  As he hies him away “to fresh scenes and pastures green.”
  But hark a noise that thrills me, what can it mean?
  I hear the crush of mighty frame.
  The Tiger of the Everglades:
  As onward through the brush he came,
  And through the swamp and moss he wades,
  He leaves a great trail in his wake
  As rushing forward toward his prey:
  His mighty limbs with ease can break:
  And open wide a passage way.
  His limbs are armed with claws so great,
  His jaws are filled with horrid teeth:
  Alas! I fear our saurian’s fate,
  He’s simply dallying with death.
  Our herbivore is armed for flight:
  With paddles strong and swimming tail,
  He is not built indeed for fight,
  To ’scape by flood he should not fail.
  For, though the reptiles weigh the same,
  And each span forty feet in length.
  I fear the swimmer’ll lose the game,
  The carnivore excels in strength.
  Let him escape beyond his foe,
  Who dare not venture in the flood.
  Toward the deep waters he should go,
  Nor drench his pasture with his blood.

Too bad! rush as he may, he cannot escape this fierce Tiger of the
Everglades. So occupied are the great dinosaurs, they do not heed my
approach. Lifting anchor I pulled across the stream into the channel
made by the trachodon on his way towards shore. The noble lizard seeing
that he could not escape his foe, bravely faces him. As if to hurry
the end, he exposes the most vulnerable part of his body, by rising
on his hind limbs. The enemy hurls himself at full length upon his
defenseless victim; with great claws of hardened horn, full ten inches
long, he rips his body down and red blood floods the mossy way. As
he falls to earth and death, this tyrant, of those early days, tears
open his body, and feeds on the quivering flesh and running blood in
the very shelter of the redwood forest. The awful terror of the scene
kept me well out of reach in the water. I was overcome with the shock,
coming so swiftly in the peaceful woods. The sun was not darkened, the
perfume of flowers filled the air, the gentle breeze sighed in the
branches overhead, showing that nature knows no pity, no mercy. That
death is inevitable, and still nature’s beauty, her changing seasons
go on for time. Even though the victim was a cold blooded reptile I
had become deeply interested in it. I remembered however, that the
carnivore must prey on the herbivore; that the latter increase so
rapidly, the death of one of their number would leave scarcely a ripple
on the reptilian life of the everglades. I had time of course to study
the conqueror carefully, I saw he did not differ greatly from the
one Professor Osborn described as Tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the
tyrants; from a partial skeleton and magnificent head, discovered by
Barnum Brown in the Hell Creek Beds of northern Montana. His huge head
is four feet long, three feet wide and two feet high. The jaws armed
with teeth six inches long, with serrated edges on the double cutting
surfaces. A great sinewy body, very short front limbs, powerful hind
ones, and long tail, with sled-like chevron bones, and extending
processes interlocking the caudal vertebrae, not allowing them to move
freely on themselves, as in the snakes and lizards of today. The tail
was stiffened and was dragged along on the ground. The body was 40 feet
long and the head reached nineteen feet above the ground. As I saw, a
blow from his terrible claw-armed hind limb, tore open the trachodon,
nearly his equal in bulk. After gormandising to his heart’s content,
he drifted off into the forest, and I saw him no more. I then paddled
in short and tying my boat to a sapling, went up to the carcass and
secured great strips of the tough skin so beautifully adorned with
shining and beautifully colored scales, polygonal or rounded, some
so small that they appeared as mere dots, as already observed. I was
delighted to see near by a pool of alkali water, in this I doused the
skin and it then only took a short time to break up the glue. I found
a poplar log about eight inches in diameter and after sharpening one
end, I drove it into the ground over a dead log that was lying on the
ground. After peeling off the bark from the ends I had a handy device,
so stretching the skin over it, scaly side down, and using the edge of
a chisel for a scraper, I rapidly prepared the skin for use, cleaning
off the flesh and broken down glue. By the time it was dry I had
tanned it, and it was as pliable as newly tanned leather. I continued
my labor until I had prepared a great roll. Not of buck-skin, but
trachodon skin. I saw in prospect sails, ropes paulins for my boat and
myself, as a protection against the rains and for many other things.
Where the skin had been torn from the dorsal spines, I saw bundles of
ossified tendons, like those of a turkey’s leg. They lay across each
other diagonally to the spines, while other rows were parallel. What
were they for? I supposed to stiffen, and strengthen the dorsal column.
Perhaps too, if our trachodon had not been so foolish as to face his
enemy, and had continued the retreat, and the tiger had leaped on his
back, his claws finding no foothold on account of these same bony
tendons, he might have lost his footing. They extended some distance
into the tail, making the forward part like an oar. The undulations we
saw, were performed by the posterior part of the tail while in the act
of swimming.




CHAPTER XII

WHAT THE CRETACEOUS SEAS BROUGHT FORTH


One has some strange day dreams often, at least I have. My only
daughter died some years ago; though in imagination she is often with
me, I thought once I had gone to sleep. When I woke next morning I
realized that time had turned backward. I found myself beside the
boundless sea, and it was not the sea I had looked on but yesterday,
I was sitting under a limestone escarpment, with a beach before me of
fine sand. The waves rolling outside of a bar that had been deposited
by a river, whose mouth I could see on the eastern side of the steep
bluff under which I sat. “Thank God,” I cried, “You have taken me back
to the old Cretaceous Ocean.” I had explored her elevated and denuded
bed for twenty seasons in the Short Grass country of Western Kansas;
collecting her rich fauna of reptiles and fishes. To know that I was to
be permitted to actually see the animals themselves, in their natural
environments. To explore her shore lines. Her sheltered bays. To see
her fleets of plesiosaurs come sailing in after an ocean cruise; her
great mosasaurs, and bony fishes. How glorious, but where is Maud.
The thought came to me like a flash. Life had seemed so much more
enjoyable with her beside me. With her appreciative ear, to listen for
what my mind conceived, and my lips uttered, she never contradicted
me when I uttered an opinion. No! she realized that I, with my vast
store of experience might well be her teacher, and she enjoyed the
story of my life so much that her eager face, and flashing eyes,
were a stimulus to my mind, awakening old experiences and memories
long forgotten. Although she had been with me for a short time, she
had become necessary to me. I knew how much I would miss her in the
adventures that lay before me. While these thoughts were passing, I
was delighted to hear her gentle voice call out “Papa, here I am.”
And looking up I saw her leaning out of the mouth of a cave a short
distance above me. I cried out with pleasure and rushing to the beach
picked up the dry trunk of a small pine, with stumps of branches on
either side. I carried it to the bluff and leaning against it, made a
convenient ladder for Maud to descend on which she rapidly did, and
stood beside me. Of course our chief talk was about this miraculous
event in our lives and we wondered what was in store for us. We
thrilled with delight when we realized how lovely the country was.
The climate temperature. We smelled the delicious odor of magnolia
blooms, for a beautiful forest skirted the hills and plains before us
to the east, and north and south, while to the west, as far as the eye
could reach a great ocean, whose western shore line must have been
thousands of miles toward the setting sun. Taking her arm we walked
down to the beach. In the zone between high and low tide, unlimited
oysters, no larger than silver half dollars lay strewn around. While
plowing through the sand, were _Inoceramus_ shells that measured four
feet high, and five feet long, leaving a great trail behind. The shore
line was strewn with many of these huge shells. We mentioned the many
uses they could be put to, for our convenience. Thin and transparent
they would do for windows in the house, I planned to build. They would
take the place of shingles, and even doors. We enjoyed a feast of raw
oysters with the sea water for seasoning. We then went to work hauling
up from the piles of driftwood, trunks of small trees near the cave.
Which Maud told me would make her a nice room as it was high and dry
with a floor of white sand. By building four walls with the logs,
leaving spaces for windows and doors, we succeeded after many days of
labor in having a room twelve by fourteen feet. Then we put on a roof,
of the large shells, hung our doors and windows, filled the spaces
between the logs with clay, and moss, built a fire place and chimney.
The effect of the light passing through the shells was very beautiful
indeed. Our original ladder led to Maud’s Cave, through a trap door.
I gathered the fragrant boughs of pine trees for the beds. We cared
little for furniture, pictures and ornaments. How insignificant man’s
costliest works compared to the works of the great Creator, His air,
and water, His glorious sea forest and plain, the starry firmament on
high, given us so freely. How rich we were, though possessing only the
clothes on our backs, and the few tools I had in my collecting bag.
A few matches and some strings of sinew I had cut in another age, I
also found a file in the lowest corner of my collecting bag, and from
fragments of bone made some fish-hooks, we had built a chimney and in
the open fireplace Maud heated water in a deep sea shell while I caught
a string of nice fishes, which she broiled for supper or fried for
breakfast. I also found the tracks of a turtle, whose bones and skull I
discovered in the chalk of Kansas. Professor Cope named it _Torycheles
latiremus_. Suspecting that she had hidden some eggs in the dry sand,
I dug around in it with my hands and found a hat full of her soft
shelled eggs. With the fish we had many most delightful repasts, and we
talked of the time when we hoped to explore this new region, the Early
Cretaceous. Study its rich fauna and flora. After building our cabin,
as we were very tired after a strenuous day, Maud kissed me good night
and retired to her room in the cave, while I lay down in the corner of
the house. At the first streak of day a fire was builded, and breakfast
started. I had made a pail of a deep shell shaped like a woman’s hood,
and called later by Conrad _Haploscapha grandes_, the first great
hood. I had bored a hole through either edge, and with an aralia vine
for a handle, I carried it to a nearby hill; where a lovely spring of
pure water gushed out, and returned with it brimful of the life saving
liquid. We used thin shells, we had found on the beach, for plates and
made our knives and forks and spoons of wood. At breakfast Maud asked
me if I knew where we were. “Yes, dear,” I replied, “we are in Western
Kansas. These limestone bluffs are composed of jointed limestone. Some
day a gorge will be cut through them by the Smoky Hill River ninety
feet deep, and a mile long, and it will be in Trego County just below
the mouth of Hackberry Creek. Get your hat and we will see!” “I am
ready, papa,” she cried, so with collecting bag over my shoulder, and
pick in hand, we walked rapidly along the hard sandy shore line. We
soon rounded the point, and as I suspected the shore swung off into a
vast amphitheatre-like cove. We could just see the distant headland,
far to the north. While the land and sea curved in toward the east and
back to the north, forming a great land locked bay.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Badlands near Steveville. Notice Cross
Bedding. Page 61, 69.]

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Quarry with skeleton of _Corythosaurus_ lost
at sea, 1916. Page 160.]

“O see papa!” Maud cried, “what is that lying on the water just off
shore? It looks like a huge log half submerged.” “No dear. I believe it
is a _Tylosaur_ or great ram-nosed lizard, the monarch of this ocean.
See! he raises a conical head above the water, that terminates in a
long bony ram. His head is five feet long. See his four powerful
paddles begin to move! his eel-like tail is longer than head and trunk
combined. Watch its graceful and rapid undulations.” “My,” cried Maud,
“it is larger than the storied sea serpents of sailors and seaside
resorts. It must be fifty feet long.” “Fully that,” I answered. “I
wonder what has started him off in such a hurry?” “What does that
streak of foam mean yonder?” asked my companion. “It is another saurian
coming to battle, dear,” I answered. The scene was indeed exciting.
We clapped our hands and shouted encouragement to our saurian as he
lashed the water, and beat it into a foam, that floated behind in a
long curling wake. Or patches were caught up by the passing breeze
and wafted away as lightly as the bubbles children love to blow. We
had ascended the point as we rounded it, and so are high enough to
watch the battle royal. As they come together like colliding express
trains, our reptile plunges his bony ram into the quivering flesh
of his opponent, piercing heart and lungs. Withdrawing his ram, he
lingers near while the dying mosasaur reddens the salty brine with his
life-blood. A few convulsive struggles, and he lies a helpless mass on
the surface, while his victor hies away to other conquests. “I never
knew these _Tylosaurs_ grew to such huge dimensions,” said Maud, “You
know the one in the American Museum is only about thirty feet long, and
that was considered large for the species.” “Yes, I know,” I replied.
“But I also know of one huge skeleton belonging to the University of
Kansas at Lawrence, that measures fifty feet in length. His enormous
head is five feet long, the same size evidently as this one. Who knows
but that 5,000,000 years from now his skeleton may be exhumed from the
chalk of Kansas and exhibited at the Museum of the University!” “I
remember the mosasaurs, papa, you described in ‘The Life of a Fossil
Hunter.’ After the _Tylosaurus_ came the flat paddles _Platecarpus_,
with its blunt ram or rostrum at the end of the nose; then _Clidastes_,
a lithe creature and more elegantly built than the other two.” “Yes,
dear, I have been fortunate in the discovery of complete skeletons of
these fine swimmers. I sent a very beautiful skeleton of a _Tylosaur_
to the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. (Fig. 5). Skeletons
of _Platecarpus_ to Tübingen University, as well as a _Tylosaurus_. And
one to The Museum of Toronto University, Canada, and another to the
Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, Canada. A beautiful _Clidastes_ to
Vassar College, New York, a fine head and trunk to Carnegie Museum,
at Pittsburgh, Pa. The Mosasaurs, you know, all have short necks and
long tails. The jaws are armed with recurved teeth and a set on either
side in the roof of the mouth near the gullet enable them to hold their
prey, so they could not escape if they opened their mouths. They had
an aid to swallowing their food, by means of a ball and socket hinge
in the center of the lower jaws, just behind the tooth-bearing bones.
This enabled them to expand the lower jaws and shortening them so as to
force the food down the throat.”

“See Papa,” said Maud, “The rising tide has floated the dead saurian
towards the shore.” We walked to the beach and our united efforts
enabled us to pull him in. He was a magnificent example of the sea
life of his day. I doubt if ever a swimmer excelled this one in
speed. The four powerful paddles and lithe form, and the long tail
in constant vibration, enabled him to cut the water like the prow of
a racing yacht. His entire body was covered with small scales like
those of a diamond rattler, arranged in beautiful colored designs, and
highly polished. The scales sparkling in iridescent splendor. “How
well poised the head,” said Maud. “How large the eyes, protected by
sclerotic plates of bone now glazed in death.” “Wonderfully beautiful,”
I answered, “So God creates His creatures, His plants, His crystals.
Man’s feeble efforts to imitate nature how crude and clumsy.”

“I think Maud it would be a good plan to cut off strips of the skin
for ropes and sails, and many other useful things. I will make you a
hammock of a wide strip.” “Very well,” she answered, “Let us go to
work.” While busily engaged, we were covered with moving shadows and
looking up saw enormous _Pteranodonts_ those glorious flying reptiles,
hovering over head. With broad expanded wing, some twenty feet from tip
to tip, they swooped downward, or rested in graceful attitudes in mid
air. Their great eyes scanned the ocean before us for fishes, and when
one was discovered dropped like a shot into the bay rapidly reappearing
with a fish between their toothless beaks. One after another broke the
mirror like surface of the deep, and always came to the surface with
a fish. Their unerring sight had discovered. No eagle ever dropped
quicker on his frightened quarry than these lizards. The scene before
us was exciting indeed.

After finishing our labor and stretching the skin of our _Mosasaur_ on
the sand to dry we continued our stroll along the sand. In a deep hole,
we admired a whole colony of the most beautiful swimming crinoids, or
sea lilies we had ever seen. They were stemless and floated with the
currents of Mosaurian Bay, as I had named the sheet of water on the new
map I had made. Their bodies, about the shape of half an egg, with an
opening in the center, and ten arms radiating from the margin. These
arms were three feet long, with feathered edges. Over the mouth too,
were smaller arms used to comb off into the mouth the tiny animal life
of the sea, that was strained through, and caught in the meshes of the
feathered arms. My boys found hundreds of these crinoids in the chalk
on Beaver Creek, Kansas, called _Uintacrinus socialis_. We enriched
many Museums with them.

“Papa,” said Maud, “let us go into the woods to escape the heat.” It
was beginning to be felt, as the sun has climbed over the trees, and
the heat beats upon the dry sands. We first entered a hard and soft
wood forest, composed largely of Sassafras, Magnolia, Linden, Birch
in endless variety, Cinnamon, Sweet Gum, and many other of the first
trees with heart and bark like our existing forests of the twentieth
century. There was a thick underbrush of wild roses and aralia vines,
with their beautiful three and five lobed dentate leaves. The brooks
were lined with rushes, and ferns and other familiar vegetation. We
could see deeper in the forest the stately Redwood in serried ranks,
as far as the eye could reach; colonnades of God’s first temple. Here
indeed we found the coveted shads. The trunks like Gothic columns
lifted their stately forms two hundred feet on high, with densely
packed crowns of living green, that cut off the direct rays of the sun.
They filtered through like those through stained glass filling the
woods with tinted and mysterious light. “How grand,” I cried, “to live
so close to God and His great heart, Nature’s heart. God is the very
embodiment, everywhere of nature, even ‘the spacious firmament on high,
and all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens a shining frame,
there great original proclaim.’ There, Maud, do you see the damp sand
along the river shore. See how the leaves have fallen in it, some lie
flat, others with stem down, are half buried; all will be covered with
the ocean mud at high tide, there they will remain until pressed by
the masses of rock that will be laid down upon the deposit, it will be
hardened into sandstone, and the leaf impressions will be preserved
for millions of years. Until in the twentieth century, I will dig them
from the solid rock in the central plains of Kansas, and Lesquereux and
Ward, and Knowlton and Wilson, will identify them.”

So we wandered on through mighty aisles in this great temple, where
God loved to walk, though all unseen by our mortal eyes, we felt His
presence near. “O Papa,” cried Maud. “See the ground is strewn with
edible acorns. There were no squirrels last winter to store them away.
And there are some ripe figs among the green ones in yonder tree. If
you will gather the figs, I will fill my apron with acorns and we will
have a new dish for dinner.” “All right,” I replied and soon gathered
a large supply. We carried our treasures home; and while Maud cracked
the acorns between two cobblestones, I secured a strong shell for a
mortar and a rounded stone for a pestle and ground the fruit and nuts
together, which we made into little cakes, they with hard boiled turtle
eggs made a dinner we enjoyed.

I had scraped a shell full of salt from the face of a precipice where
the water of the sea had beaten high against it and on evaporating
left a thick layer of salt behind. And so the day passed, every moment
showing us a new phase of the Creator’s handiwork. We soon decided that
as the sea life here was so luxuriant, we would build a ship to sail
the quiet waters of the Mosasaurian Bay. I succeeded in planning one,
with Maud’s assistance, that promised safety and comfort. I selected
half a dozen straight redwood logs, thirty feet long; burned off the
ends and branches. With the aid of fire dug them out, and stretched
over them the dried skin of mosasaurs. (Many had been killed in their
battles and we had secured their skins). Each compartment was air tight
and very buoyant, I rived out boards from the redwood logs, and lashed
them across the boats for a platform, on which we built cabins fore
and aft, and erected a main mast from which our sails were stretched
from yard arms, manipulated with ropes from the same tough hide that
we geared as sails. Huge rocks we heaved on deck and attached ropes
to them and used them as anchors. We made state rooms, kitchen, and
sitting room, amid ship. After many days of labor, we finished our
craft, and were ready for life on the ocean wave.

We resolved not to venture far from shore and to cast anchor in some
quiet land locked bay at night, Maud was to handle the steering
apparatus, while I cared for the sails, Maud cooked dainty morsels
from land and sea and bayou. We not only got turtle eggs but the
turtles themselves, and a great variety of fishes, mackerel, herring,
etc. While building our ship we had unlimited adventures, because each
morning and evening we walked off into the forest or explored the
sea-shore, or walked along the winding river, or mossy bayou. But as my
attention was occupied in the boat building I could not keep notes of
these adventures. We named our little ship The Swan, not because of the
beauty of the boat, but because it floated as lightly as a swan on the
waters of Mosasaurian Bay.

One lovely morning in early June when life was the richest, and the
forest had attained perfection; we hoisted our great square sail,
and loosened our rudder bands, and put to sea. With a gentle breeze
stirring, and with only a gentle ripple on the bosom of the deep; with
no rocky breakers in shore, the motion on board was delightful. “Look
Papa,” cried Maud, as a great fish, fifteen feet long, dashed by in
pursuit of a school of mackerel, that were struggling to get into water
to escape his murderous jaws. He was armed with long conical teeth,
those in front where the face with its short muzzle looked like a bull
dog, the horrid fangs were four inches long; in the center of the head
was a triangular crest, that cut the waves like the dorsal spine of a
shark. He beat the water into spray, in his eager pursuit of his prey;
and many a fish fell a victim to his appetite. His skull was two feet
long, with powerful lower jaw, his great pectoral fins were over three
feet long. The rays had sharp outer edges. He could set and use them as
a sword to gash his enemies, the great white sharks. His forked tail,
with span of over four feet, would cause an awful blow when used as a
weapon; large glistening scales, covered the entire body. Maud called
my attention to the fact that our huge fish had finished breakfast,
and was swimming back into the deep water of the bay, quite leisurely,
so graceful in motion a living five horse power motor boat. “You
remember,” she said, “the skeleton you sent of this fish to the British
Museum.” “O yes,” I replied, “Mr. Pycraft wrote a description of it for
the Illustrated London News, March 1, 1913.” (Fig. 4).

“My son George found and collected this fine specimen, I prepared it.”
“You must be as pleased to see the boys make such noted discoveries,”
she said. “O yes, because it encourages them to keep at work, in this
life work of mine. As a boy I loved nature, I was a hunter too and
used to kill buffalo and antelope. But after close association with
the most famous Naturalist America has produced, Prof. E. D. Cope of
Philadelphia, who often told me that though we must destroy our enemies
and protect our friends, as a matter of self protection, yet wanton
destruction of life was a crime. The more I thought of this suggestion
the more I came to fully believe it. God loves the creatures He has
created and will surely punish man for needless destruction of the
beautiful birds and fur bearing animals, so they can decorate their own
persons, wearing the borrowed plumage, and silky furs of his creatures.
I long ago gave up killing wild animals, and for years could say with
Goldsmith, ‘No herds that roam the valley wide to slaughter I condemn,
Moved by the power that pities me, I learn to pity them.’ However as I
like meat I am obliged to qualify the stanza by saying, as is reported
Goldsmith’s wife had said, ‘No herd that roves the valley wide to
slaughter I condemn. The butcher kills the meat for me, I buy the meat
of him.’ In other words I let my sons do the hunting. My great pleasure
as you know dear girl, is to dig with pick and shovel from the rock,
the animals of the past, to clean and prepare the crumbling bones, and
by the power of the imagination breathe into them new life. And has not
God shown us His appreciation of this love we both possess by bringing
us back here among His creatures of another day.”

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Charlie letting down his Plated Dinosaur by
gravity. Page 96.]

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Hauling out fossil log. Page 170.]

“O! Papa!” cried Maud. “See the water is cut by the spines of great
sharks twenty-five feet long. See some are so near the ship in this
transparent water that we can see them perfectly.” “There,” I answered,
“is a _Portheus_ they seem to be in pursuit of. That big shark passes
immediately under the _Portheus_. He turns on his back, and his huge
mouth opens, look at the many rows of wicked looking teeth. How
they gleam in the light, they are sharp as razors.” “See how many
different forms of teeth in different parts of the mouth.” “Yes dear I
remember that in the mouth of one I sent to Munich in 1882, from the
Kansas Chalk Dr. Eastman found twenty-five synonyms, or species that
had been described from loose teeth. Watch, there are several other big
sharks coming to the assistance of the one who is after the _Portheus_.
We will hoist the sail and try and keep pace with the battle, that
surges westward, watch the rudder Maud while I loosen the main sail! It
bellied to the strengthening breeze, urging on our ship with increasing
speed until we were again among them. The _Portheus_ now swimming
for life was the foci of the sharks, that were coming to the attack
from all directions. One would dive under the fish, and receive for
his pains a stroke from his powerful tail that would put him out of
commission, another would receive a thrust from the sword-like ray of
the front fin. Undaunted, others hurried up like a pack of wolves on
a wounded deer. Though many were wounded in the fray our hero fish at
last succumbed to numbers, who gashed his body with their lance-like
teeth, and the water was tinged with his life-blood; weaken and
overpowered, he gradually ceased struggling. The sharks gathered to the
feast. One however was so badly wounded by the _Portheus_, that he went
to the oozy bottom with him. I have preserved in the Museum of the
University of Kansas a shark twenty-five feet long, and mingled with
his remains were the bones of a _Portheus_. The evident result of such
a combat as we witnessed on Mosasaurian Bay.”

We lowered our sail, and drifted idly on the swelling tide, that led
towards shore. Maud steered for the mouth of a large river’s mouth, and
succeeded in getting the boat into deep water under a protecting bank,
and we snubbed our ship to some saplings and also cast our anchors over
board, as an additional aid to holding the boat in place. I crossed the
gang plank, I had connected with the shore, and went off into the woods
after berries, for dinner, while Maude cast her fish lines over board,
and lighted a fire, I brought home a couple of quarts of raspberries,
and found Maud had caught and prepared a nice mess of fishes, that were
sizzling over the fire. She soon had a nice meal ready. So the day
passed and we early sought our state rooms, I first however, recited a
poem I wrote on board a C. P. R. Steamboat, enroute from Port McNicoll
to Port Arthur in June, 1914:


A LAKE TRIP

  I am riding on the bosom of an inland chain of lakes,
  At their glories and their wonders my sluggish soul awakens!
  They become the mighty highway of two nations strong and brave,
  And the commerce of two peoples are wafted o’er the wave.

  On either shore, once planted, (God’s ancient temple grand),
  The great primaeval forest densely covered all the land,
  Man’s vandal hand has cut it from the face of mother earth,
  To a second growth of timber the land has given birth.

  And in this Age of Iron, great freighters haul the ore,
  Across Superior’s bosom to the smelters calling “more”
  Ten thousand tons of coal the freighters carry west,
  Where the iron-ore is loaded for its journey to the east.

  I am riding on a Steamer of the C. P.’s mighty fleet.
  The keel is riding even as the earth beneath one’s feet,
  In fact a Floating Palace with all its comforts there.
  Its pathways blazed before it for weather rough or fair.

  What a glorious prospect now, is opened up to view
  The scenes for ever changing each opening vista new,
  See! indentures cut in shoreline by rivers’ mouth or bay,
  But for the lighted lamps we’d hardly find our way.

  At last our boat has entered and rapidly passed through,
  The lock of Sault St. Marie, the Frenchmen call the Soo.
  Upon the broad Superior our westward course we take
  The course the captain chooses, near the center of the lake.

  But now a mist is falling that soon becomes a fog.
  Our Siren sends her warning o’er many a lengthening rod.
  We hear the Fog Horns sounding from near or distant craft,
  And just abeam our steamship we hear an answering blast.

  We think of Ireland’s Empress as she sank beneath the wave,
  Which, until God’s trump, will be some dear one’s grave.
  But, God rules on the water, as well as on the land
  We’re very full of confidence we’re guided by His hand.

  So in our narrow state room, we lay us down to rest
  And through the long night watches, we journey towards the west,
  And when the morn awakes us, the sun is shining bright.
  And head land peaks are glowing with streams of early light.

We woke next morning much refreshed as the night had been cool. After
breakfast we were ready for the adventures of another day. Drifting
out gently on the broad waters of the bay, we were delighted to see a
school of _Plesiosaurs_ come sailing in from some distant cruise. These
strange sea lizards, with long powerful neck and four paddles, and a
mere stump of a tail. They were on a fishing excursion, as the herring
and mackerel were now coming in to spawn near shore. These monster
saurians swam like a snake bird below the surface, their long necks and
heads darted hither and thither above and below exploring a space of
forty feet in search of fishes. We could see the flash of shining teeth
as a luckless fish was captured. Some of them floated on the surface,
and with swan-like neck and body they moved in graceful circles, or
sped along at a terrific pace picking up their morning meal, from the
countless panic stricken fishes, that vainly sought to escape their
tooth-armed jaws. I told Maud of a complete skeleton that had once been
found by a farmer in the Kansas chalk of Butte Creek, Logan County. “He
started to excavate a place for a stable when he uncovered some huge
vertebrae, and ribs over five feet long. He supposed they were elephant
bones, and as they were broken, he thought they could not be saved, and
so dug up the bones with the chalk. They were dumped into a cow yard
and beaten to powder under their feet, and could never be restored. I
grieved much over the loss to science of that splendid specimen that
has never been duplicated. Dr. S. W. Williston, the oldest living
American Vertebrate Paleontologist, described the few bones I was able
to save from the general wreck. He did me the honor of naming it after
me.” “What a pity,” cried Maud. “It must be terrible for you to learn
of such vandalism.” “Yes, dear,” I replied. “I doubt whether any mortal
suffers more from this kind of vandalism due entirely to ignorance than
I. I remember finding some very large turtles in the Upper Miocene
of Phillips County, Kansas, that had been killed evidently by a sand
storm, as they were all resting on their carapaces, as if traveling in
one direction. I secured over twenty of these land turtles, and among
them was the most perfect and beautiful one I have ever collected,
although Dr. Weiland of Yale University told me that if five of the
most perfect fossil turtles known, were placed together a couple I
sent his museum, would rank 2 and 3. I had occasion to photograph this
splendid specimen, and had laid it on edge on a deal table. I then went
into a carpenter shop for assistance in moving another, too heavy for
me to handle. When we got to the table the man helping me sprang on
it (as he thought he could lift the one we were carrying easier), his
weight was so great, it bent the boards on whose further ends the fine
specimen was resting, and it came to the floor with a crash. It was
broken to pieces so small it could not be saved and restored. So one
of these animals so perfect in all human probability it will never be
duplicated, was destroyed. The loss was terrible for me.” “You have had
some bitter experiences,” said Maud, tears standing in her sympathetic
eyes. “Many indeed, Maud,” I answered. “But while we have been talking
our plesiosaurs have put to sea. Their distant wakes are just visible.”
“See, papa, what a strange looking fish. What is it do you suppose?”
“Maud, that to me is the best armored and most ferocious fish I have
ever known. I used to think the man-eating sharks, off the Florida
coast were the most blood thirsty of the order, but this one is still
worse. Notice the head is prolonged in front into a long round bony
snout, or ram. On account of this I called it a snout fish when I first
discovered their bones in the Kansas chalk. The ram ends, you notice,
in a sharp point eight or ten inches long. Then at the end of the mouth
are four lance-like teeth projecting forward, and outward. The object
was for these to cut the breach his ram had made in the quivering flesh
of a mosasaur wider, so he could force his head into the bleeding
flesh to the eye rims. But his most terrible weapons are his pectoral
fins. See, they are four feet long. Serrated on the cutting or outer
edge, enameled and sharp as a knife. They can be locked, and stand
out straight from the body. A sudden swing would, if he was close to
a mosasaur cut a gash several feet long in its vitals. See these fins
span over eight feet. I pity the fish or reptile that comes his way.”
“Watch, papa!” cried Maud. “There comes a huge shark. He certainly
doesn’t mean to attack such a well-armed fighter, does he?” “I should
not be surprised,” I answered. “I believe a shark of this size, at
least twenty-five feet long, will attack anything that has life.” The
shark made a sudden dive under the snout fish, but before he could turn
the fish set his right sword-like fin and swinging suddenly to the left
made an awful gash into the side of the shark laying open and slashing
his vital organs. Relaxing his efforts he sank into the ooze of the
ocean bed, followed by the snout fish to feast off his carcass. And
so we idly drifted with the currents and study the wondrous fauna of
this strange sea and land. We see Marsh’s loon diving for fishes, and
many other birds not known to science. One day while resting from the
excessive heat in the shade of a redwood Maud was very tired and soon
fell asleep. I, too, leaning against a mossy log, dozed off.




CHAPTER XIII

THE WONDERS OF THE PERMIAN


How wonderfully God works in one’s life! I must have fallen from the
log, for I dreamed, Maud and I had both disappeared into a sluggish
lagoon. When I came to my senses, I discovered that I was in a great
jungle of vegetation; that belonged to a very early age I recognized
the dense forest of many species of Carboniferous Tree Ferns and Tree
Rushes; and many species of Cycads. Nearly all the trees were inward
growers, with plumes of vegetation on top of the scar-marked trunks,
from which the leaves had already fallen during their growth upward.
I knew that only a thin, hard, outer covering protected the pith
beneath of most of the trees around me. Although there were pines, the
_Angiosperms_ had not yet appeared. Everywhere were dense masses of
sponge-moss, and moss-like trees.

  _Lepidodendrons_ bushy crest
  Wave back and forth, together prest;
  While sponge-moss hangs in festoons gay
  Across the thickly planted way.

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--Urn-shaped mass of rock. Page 129.]

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Egyptian Sphinx-like rock. Page 129.]

The climate was tropical; the heat intense. The water was fresh; no sea
in sight.

I climbed to the top of a tree fern, from which point of vantage, I had
an uninterrupted view of the surrounding country; which was one great
level stretch of fern plumes, densely intermingled with ancient pines,
lepidodendrons, and cycads. The latter resembling gigantic pine apples,
with a plume of leaves on top; or with tree-like trunk, and plume of
crowded pinnate leaves. These first clung closer to the ground. While
the others sought the direct sunlight perhaps fifty feet above. From
my field of vision, these vast masses of the most delicate foliage
imaginable, moved by the gentle breeze in gentle undulations, with only
here and there a break in their carpet-like compactness. While swinging
below, as I have already noted, were hanging mosses in various hues.
The ground densely covered with sponge-moss. In the lower places pools
of water into which the moss extended often completely covering them, a
land of treacherous bogs. One must watch his footing as I soon proved,
by cutting a rush whose length was over twenty-five feet, and pushed it
easily down into one of these small moss-ponds, through the peat and
failed to reach the bottom, I realized how easily one might lose his
footing, and slip into one of these mossy swamps and disappear.

And another thought came to me of the wonderful bone-bed Miller found
along the Big Wichita in Texas, in 1909 where many complete skeletons
covering a space six or seven feet wide, ten or twelve feet long and
two feet thick. In this limited interval, according to Dr. S. W.
Williston, who has been so fortunate as to study the material secured
by Miller were dozens of complete skeletons packed like sardines in a
box of the wonderful fauna of the Permian of Texas.

From a slight observation of the flora of the region into which we had
been miraculously transplanted, it had convinced me that I had gone
back from the twentieth century some twelve million years to the close
of the Carboniferous, that great age of Coal Plants, when vast regions
packed with the moss and other vegetation had been engulfed in the sea,
and after ages converted into coal.

So, how easily it was for me to realize that one of these lovely moss
covered pools, might prove a death-trap to any animal whose spoor lay
through this region. It was lucky for me that I still possessed a
Marsh pick with its broad duck-billed end, with which I could easily
hew my way through the dense but easily felled trees and rushes, that
obstructed in jungles of vegetation my progress. I judged that the open
spaces I saw in the distance from my lookout in the crown of a tree
fern, must represent ponds or lakes and there, would be by far a better
place to study the fauna of this strange region, because I knew from my
own discoveries in the Permian of Texas that many of the vertebrates
were Amphibians who lived in the water or the land as pleased their
fancy.

As I knew I would like to return to the place where I first awoke to
the realities of life, and from past experiences Maud was likely to
appear near here too. My first act after sliding down from the tree
was to divest myself of all my clothing except a pair of shoes, a pair
of pants, and a woolen shirt and light hat, with a broad rim I had
worn so long. On account of the moist climate and thick vegetation,
the air was heavy with carbonic acid gas. The only place where fresh
winds were blowing and the air was rich in oxygen, was on top of the
forests, or as I hoped along some lake shore where the winds of heaven
would be able to ripple the waters at least. So ready armed with my
pick to cut a pathway or defend myself from some hungry amphibian or
reptile because I expected to find amphibians with huge heads, and
bodies larger than my own, armed with terrible teeth. It seemed strange
too, that though in the twentieth century the order to which these
giants belonged, frogs and salamander were ready to disappear. Here
they were the dominant type so abundant that the Permian Age has been
called the Age of Amphibian or Batracians, I found the work fatiguing
on account of the great heat and close and oppressive atmosphere, that
constantly seemed to be on me to take a nap, yet with the power man has
over material and sensual things, I cut a pathway broad enough for two
to walk in it side by side, I knew if Maud was discovered, she would
want not to follow me like an Indian in single file, but beside me. I
often stopped to listen, as I rapidly progressed toward one of the open
spaces I had noted from the tree, because born on the slight breeze
that rustled the leaves above me, I could hear the croaking of frogs
that grew louder and louder, the sound put me in mind of a lot of frogs
singing through a megaphone. Suddenly without warning, I cut through
the jungle and found myself facing an inland lake of fresh water
bordered in places with reeds and rushes and moss that reached into the
water.

At another place near where I caught my first view of the waters,
was a sandy beach. Peopled with life, both reptiles and batracians
were everywhere. The great Salamander _Eryops_ of Cope of which I had
secured so much material in the Red Beds of the Big Wichita River in
Texas both for Cope, Zittel and Von Hume, swam in the waters before
me or measured their six feet of length upon the sand. The frog-like
noise I concluded came from these huge monarchs of the Amphibians. I
could see them resting on logs that were half submerged in the water,
or swimming below the water; lying on the bottom or crawling along the
shore. Emerging from the jungle that fringed the lake on the further
margin from me were strange reptiles. One I noticed in particular was
the largest of his tribe we were likely to see here. I say we because
I could not believe that He who had brought Maud and me through so many
adventures would take her bright presence away forever. These thoughts
were in my mind as I watched a reptile come into full view out of the
jungle.

The most wonderful thing about him, was that he carried on his back an
enormous hump. The spines in the center of the column were at least
three feet high, and packed around the base were masses of muscle and
ligaments, tapering to a sharp point at the top of the spine. A cross
section would be wedge shaped. I learned afterwards from a study of
the skeleton, that as the centra of the vertebrae were very weak they
were held firmly in place by the crossing ligaments that were wound
around the centra and spines in intermingled masses. This creature had
come out of the jungle for water interested me greatly. He was about
ten feet long from head to the long end of the delicate tail. I was
surprised to see him suddenly dive back into the jungle with all the
speed at his command. The _Eryops_ too suddenly stopped croaking and
a nerve wrecking silence, covered me as with a pall. The reptiles and
amphibians sought refuge in the jungle of the bottom of the lake. And
that body of water but a second before so full of life and activity
lay a mirror, silent as the grave, looking in the direction from which
neither reptile or amphibian had run for shelter, I heard too, an
unaccustomed sound in these swamps and everglades, it sounded very
much like the cutting of trees. I could hear the crush of mingled
vegetation as if a tree fern had been felled at one strong blow and
it came sliding down against the thickly planted vegetation, I could
hear the swish as it was dragged away, to make room for another that
quickly fell. Yes! I could hear human voices I was sure, and soon I
heard wafted across the lake the loved name Maud. I could see the
trees swaying, and then one by one come down in a straight line for
the lake, and I knew that in these solitudes I was not alone. That God
had brought others to this young earth. Whose surface still felt the
subterraneous heat, whose crust was so thin it often sank into the sea
or was raised just above high tide. I sprang forward on the beach to
the water’s edge just as the last obstruction in the shape of a trunked
cycad with its tangled mass of leaflets crushed to the earth and behind
the ambuscade of vegetation stood my whole family from Mamma to Levi,
and close beside him was Maud. George and Charlie were the ones who
wielded their picks, Mabel and Myrtle and the children and the others
dragged the trees away and they had their hands on the cycad when they
suddenly beheld me standing petrified on the beach. Such a shout went
up was never heard before. I waved my pick speechless with surprise,
for once at least in my life, as you have all found out my dear
readers, as my father used to say “I talk too much.”

All at once I recovered the use of my organs of speech and shouted:
“Why don’t you come over?” They all waved branches of the palm like
cycad they had torn from its head, as they shouted back: “_Why don’t
you come over?_” Well it did appear to me that it would be easier for
me to cross the smooth waters than such a crowd. So trimming off the
plumes from a mass of cycad and tree ferns, I soon had enough trunks
to build me a raft, I lashed them together with the mid ribs of the
cycad leaflets, which proved as strong and pliable as buck-skin thongs.
In a very few minutes I had a raft that floated like a cork, as the
centers of the trunks were full of pith. We afterwards found this pith
was quite starchy and made very acceptable sago flour. In the mean
time, the party on the other shore had erected huts covered with leaves
above, and open below so the wind might circulate through them and the
roofs would not only deflect the ardent heat of the sun but protect us
from torrential rains. With a reed for a paddle I sprang on my raft and
soon ferried across to my beloved ones, I had never expected to meet in
the Permian at least. Of course I was delighted to find Maud.

After our greetings they gathered in affectionate groups under the
trees and told me of their experiences since we last met. Mamma said
after I disappeared so suddenly and mysteriously from my home in
Lawrence, she had induced George and Charlie to move their families
into the home nest, from which they had taken flight. She had imagined
all kinds of things, and even the Government had missed their fossil
hunter and had exhausted the resources of the Detective Division as
well as that of the United States in the endeavor to locate me, but I
had disappeared as effectually as if the earth had opened her mouth and
swallowed me up. Only day before yesterday Levi suddenly disappeared,
and left her in a terrible state of suspense as to what it all meant.
Last night she had a family council with George and Charlie and their
wives. They went over the same old ground again and again and were no
nearer solving the perplexing problems than at first. The children had
been sent to bed and there were rocking chairs enough to go round in
which the grown ups were seated comfortably. Mamma she told me, was
the first to doze off and Charlie soon followed suit. The girls and
George smiled over the others, but before they realized it they too,
had dropped off. George was the first one to wake with a start. He
could hardly believe his senses. They were in a dense forest of tree
ferns, in fact only a few miles from where I was at the time. They were
all there but Levi, and as George’s surprised exclamation woke them
all they heard a rustling noise in the edge of a little clearing and
before they could say a word Levi broke through the jungle with Maud
clinging to his arm. “Well,” Mamma said, “ask Maud to tell the rest of
the story.” Which I gladly did. It seems, that as Maud had been through
a lengthy experience in the Ancient World, she had become a leader.
“Well Papa,” she remarked, “you remember when we disappeared in the
water of the Lagoon, I lost all consciousness, but came to my senses
in this jungle. My first thought was of course another providential
occurrence. I could hear what seemed the bellowing of great frogs and
strange sounds my ears had never listened to before. I wondered where
you could be, and was so anxious to find you, that I could not stand
it, remaining there all alone in this strange country, so I plunged
madly on, forcing the thick stems and trunks apart and squeezing
through them, I called to you too, ‘papa, papa, where are you!’ I
could not see an inch ahead for the vegetation. The moss tangled in my
hair that fell down and I must have looked a perfect fright. I came
suddenly on a clear space only a couple of yards across, covered with
the loveliest moss you could imagine. I sprang into the very middle of
it in my haste, and broke through and began to sink. I screamed, ‘Papa,
Papa,’ and threw out my arms toward the other side when suddenly I saw
two human hands spring out of the jungle and grasp mine, and strong
arms drew me bodily out of the treacherous pit, I stood beside smiling
brother Levi. He told me that he had gone to sleep in his room at
home in Lawrence and had awakened here the day before and that he had
wandered around in an almost dazed condition. Every thing so strange.
He could not tell what to make of it. I then told him our experiences
together in the other ages and regions we had explored, of our boat
on Mosasaurian Bay, and the many adventures we had enjoyed together
and expressed the belief that we would soon find you and we started
on the quest. Levi had his pick and cut a way while I dragged out the
trees he felled and piled them in the thick jungle. We had not gone a
great ways, when we suddenly heard a shout in front of us. ‘That is
George I know,’ cried Levi, ‘I recognize his voice,’ and he raised an
answering shout that made the very leaves tremble. We soon reached him
and there was Mamma and all the rest of our family. It was a joyful
meeting but Mamma would not allow us to remain there talking of our
wonderful experience because she was sure you could not be far off. As
the boys had their picks they cut a broad path while the rest of us
pulled the light trees out of the way and we were progressing famously
when we saw your astonished face across the narrow lake.” I could only
thank God that I had been reunited with my people and that Maud also
was there. It would have seemed terrible to remember her sinking into
the treacherous lagoon, then suddenly find myself separated from it
by millions of years. Ethel and little Raymond had gone off to the
sandy beach to play in the sand and Charlie too. They romped until
they were tired and Ethel returned to Mabel and asked her if dinner
was ready. We had not thought of it. But had been so excited at our
reunion, after so many weeks, so much occupied with our talk, that we
forgot to be hungry. Just before the family council had gone to sleep
George had been at work inventing some cooking utensils, and had not
only made diagrams of them but had secured some sheets of aluminum.
He had put them in his collecting bag along with the usual tools he
carried in the field, and when he woke with the rest of the family he
still had them. So I told him if he would make a cooking kettle I would
get something to put in it for dinner. Maud knowing the resources of
a forest better than the others gathered some dry sticks and Levi by
her advice cut some crotched sticks he drove in the earth, and a cross
stick to swing the kettle on. George soon found a round water-worn
cobblestone on the beach to use as a mold and hammered a sheet of
aluminum around it, and soon had a pot ready. He cut off a narrow strip
for a handle and punched holes in the upper rim to fasten it to. In
the meantime I wove together a lot of leaves and made a tray, which I
took to one of the cycad stumps (we had cut off the trunk). Then with
my pick scraped out a quantity of the pith that fell as white powder
into the tray. On my return Maud had the water boiling and we stirred
in sago flour and as soon as it thickened into porridge it was ready
for a lot of hungry mouths. Charlie had made some spoons, so with the
pot in the midst we thanked our heavenly Father for the food from his
hand and the glad reunion in the Old Permian of Texas. After a hearty
meal we planned for the future. Resolving to thoroughly explore the
jungle and try and reach tidewater; as we felt sure the old Permian
ocean was not far away. After our excited voices had reached quiet and
ordinary tones, we were pleased to see the Amphibians and reptiles
come out on the beach. One of the most abundant was _Labidosaurus_
an Amphibian like reptile about three feet long. It had short legs
and an enormous head compared with its length. I remember a quarry of
these reptiles I discovered on the west fork of Coffee Creek in Baylor
County, Texas. I found several fine skulls for the late Professor Cope,
and later by digging into the greenish sandstone, I secured a number
more for Dr. Von Zittel of Munich. Another reptile appeared from the
edge of the jungle that so closely resembles a South American lizard
of the twentieth century, it was called Varanus, by Dr. Broili. It was
about four feet in length, had a long head, delicate lizard-like tail.
Still another form soon attracted our attention coming from across
the narrow pond out of the woods. It was about four feet long, had
strong limbs and short head with many small teeth. The giant amphibian
_Eryops_ too, soon found the courage to come out of the water and
start his unmelodious croak to be soon answered by a friendly fellow
in the distance. So the life and noises of the quiet jungle took up
the accustomed tenor of their ways. The children clapped their hands
and shouted when a new form appeared, as delighted as if a menagerie
were on the tapis, and all the family were deeply interested. I had
the boys drive rush stakes into the ground around our clearings, so as
to protect us from the inroads of the big reptiles and amphibians, and
admit the air freely. We needed all of that we could possibly get. So
we passed the day and night fall found us all gathered in our enclosure
listening to the strange noises around us. We had already arranged
huts for the entire party and after reading a chapter (for Mamma had
her Bible with her) we offered our evening prayers and went to restful
sleep. In the morning we were early astir. It was no need to warn the
younger men and women to beware of the treacherous bogs as they already
had learned of Maud’s adventure. We made another appetising dish from
the sago flour and I caught some little reptiles not over eight inches
long and gar-pike. We fried these in their rich grease, and with the
sago mush, had an excellent breakfast. The presence of my beloved
family added much to my own pleasure.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Dog Creek, Montana. Notice effects of
vulcanism. Page 113.]

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Badlands near Cow Island, Montana. Page 118.]

My feeble pen would fail to describe the beauty of the Tree Fern and
Cycad forest. The enormous fronds of fern leaflets that crowned the
marked trunks around us, put me in mind of the Australian Tree Ferns
in the Carnegie Conservatories at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Only they
were much larger and the massive fern branches formed larger crowns.
There was such a wealth of variety here too that delighted me. All
were lost in wonder at the strange scenery and life, both in its flora
and fauna. We determined to cut our way in a southerly direction as
I felt sure I scented the distant sea. Charlie and myself using our
picks, cut a wide swath of ferns and cycads and other carboniferous
trees. Our women folks hauling them out of the way. We were constantly
coming across the strange reptilian and amphibian life of that far-away
day, and our exclamations of surprise at the beauty of this ancient
forest came involuntarily from our lips. The moss too, in many gorgeous
colors, and hues carpeted the damp ground beneath our feet, or hung in
tapestry-like folds from the branches overhead. Many hands made rapid
progress and though the heat was excessive we all perspired freely. We
often came across the bogs of great extent, ponds and lakes bordered
with peat moss, and saw countless reptiles on shore or amphibians in
the water. With the earnest hope that we might reach salt water, we
labored on under the glaring sun above, that penetrated the thick
vegetation and as we opened the way, the heat was very trying on our
unprotected heads. At last a strong breeze began to sweep the crowns of
verdure above us into great billows, making music among the delicate
branches, and I was sure we were reaching the open sea. So Charlie
climbed the trunk of a tall fern and when he got to the strong bases
of the ferns he stood erect on them and shouted, “There it is to the
south;” for as he told us, a great ocean lay before him as far as his
eyes could reach. So with renewed courage we hurried on and before
dark broke through the dense jungles we had been traveling through, on
the beach, and into a strong wind that was blowing from the south and
curling the waves into swaying masses. It was indeed a glorious sight
and we all rushed down and ran into the curling breakers near shore
and let them roll over us. Thoroughly refreshed, we returned to the
edge of the jungle and went to work building shelters for the whole
family. We were delighted when George and Charlie brought us a mess of
fishes, sturgeon-like in appearance, which, with the cycad flour, the
women got up a fine meal. Levi and Maud came in later and we enjoyed an
appetising meal. While we were resting after supper and watching the
boundless sea, I recited some of the poems I had written. The first one
in honor of Jennie McKee’s wedding day. She had been a very dear friend
indeed:

                        I.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    I am thinking of thee,
    My heart beating time
    With that heart of thine.
    How I hope, and I pray,
    That your wedding day,
    May be a day of the greatest joy,
    A day of pleasure without alloy.

                        II.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    I am longing with thee,
    That the future for you
    May never be blue,
    And like birds on the wing
    You ever may sing.
    That your dear life may be blest,
    Full of joy and of rest.

                        III.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    Your heart once so free,
    Bound in fetters of love.
    May God bless from above:
    Two hearts beat as one,
    While your course you will run,
    In currents both peaceful and sweet,
    Until golden shores you will meet.

                        IV.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    My thoughts turn to thee.
    And days that have flown
    Since you, I have known
    To the man of your choice
    And I well may rejoice,
    For you give all a woman can give,
    Your love, and yourself while you live.

                        V.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    Contentment for thee,
    In the home you will make,
    In the love you awake,
    In the strong heart and true,
    Who has pledged all to you,
    Fill that home full of love
    A forecast of mansions above.

                        VI.

    O! Jennie McKee,
    God’s blessings on thee!
    Like Mary of yore,
    May He sit at your door.
    O! sit at His feet,
    Learn wisdom so sweet,
    That will bless you as long as you live,
    While to Him your best service you give.

The children had gone to bed and our camp fire of dry fern stumps
burned brightly, or faded away as Levi and Maud replenished it. At
last worn out with the excessive heat and labor we all retired to
our respective huts. We were soon lost in sleep. When the Amphibians
greeted the rising sun with their chorus of what to us seemed like
discordant notes (doubtless they were melodious to the natives of these
early wilds where foot of man had never trod before). The human element
stirred themselves, and after breakfast we all wandered down to the
beach for an early plunge. We dried our salty clothes by running or
walking along the level sandy shore.

Maud had called our attention, in a land locked bay to a fleet of
Ammonites. Those lovely nautilus-like chambered shells, who had spread
their transparent sails to the morning breeze. Some were enormous, over
two feet in diameter, and resembled huge cornucopias. They floated as
lightly and as elegantly as a flock of swans. They were arrayed in
all the colors of the rainbow. We could also see fishes, all clad in
armor of enameled scales, in many a lovely hue, gar-pike and sturgeon
were among the most common. The bony fishes did not appear until the
Cretaceous Age, you remember.

What the children loved to do most was to dig in the sand or hunt for
the nests of small reptiles, six or eight inches long, that often lay
coiled a few inches below the surface, their heads could enter mamma’s
silver thimble. My parties found many of them in the Red Permian Beds
of Baylor County, Texas. As the sun rose higher the children became
drowsy and we returned to our huts and laid them down in some soft
fern leaflets that made a bed as light as eider down. We talked of our
wonderful adventures in quiet tones, so as not to disturb them, and
before we knew it, we too, had fallen asleep.

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Badlands of the Missouri River. Page 118.]




CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION


Last May I resigned my position as collector and preparator for the
Geological Survey of Canada. And soon afterwards went into the field
for the British Museum of Natural History, London. Though the British
government was spending no money in this kind of research, Dr. A. Smith
Woodward, Keeper of Geology there, secured the means for the first
two months’ work from The Sladin Memorial Fund of Piccadilly, London.
My son, Levi, was the only expert collector I had with me though I
employed men and transportation in the field. We settled down in a
camp a couple of miles below Steveville and remained there all summer,
exploring the badlands near the mouth of Berry Creek.

Our success was as usual, great. We were able to collect three
skeletons of duck-billed dinosaurs of the genus _Corythosaurus_, of
Brown or _Stephanosaurus_, of Lambe. They were all three discovered by
my son, Levi, who worked with remarkable persistence and enthusiasm.
I too, after I had recovered from an injury I received due to being
thrown from my wagon onto the ground, put in every moment I could see,
in the heavy work of excavating three skeletons, and taking them up
before frost, when no man can work in those beds. It will not do to let
plaster freeze, and without plaster we could not take up any vertebrate
fossil there.

Owing to the fact that the clay in the strata prevent water entering
it, very little true petrification has taken place. If you will refer
to the Life of a Fossil Hunter, page 258, you will see there what I
had learned up to the time of writing, the process by which fossils
are made. I found here in the Belly River Series entirely different
conditions. The bones had not been replaced by silica and become
petrified. There was very little change in the bones except that they
were usually sheathed in a hard layer of bog iron. The spongy bone was
as friable as that in a dry, recent bone; the cells were not filled
with rocky material. The thin outer layer of compact bone was filled
with the iron simply. I once said that if I could get my teeth on a
fossil bone I could tell its age almost, by the amount of silica it
contained. Here, however, I find that nature has more than one way of
preserving her records, and that it depends largely on the matrix in
which the bones are entombed. If clay prevents water passing through
the bones, there can be no true replacement, as water is the vehicle
used in transporting silica or lime or whatever the petrifying material
may be, and it cannot pass through certain clays. This discovery of
mine after having observed the fossilized animals and plants of many
horizons prove that the most careful observer is liable to misinterpret
the workings of nature, showing us that God’s laws are past finding out
by finite minds. Nature is a well that man can never fathom, an ocean
with no shore. As long as men observe and think, they will be drawing
water from well and ocean with no visible effect. The well will still
be full and the shores remain unexplored.

Levi found the most complete skeleton of a crested duck-billed dinosaur
that had been discovered in the Belly River Series by my party. Mr.
Brown discovered, close to the Steveville Ferry, the most complete
one known, and which he has fully described in his _Corythosaurus
casuarius_, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, New
York, November 2nd, 1916. This is the first specimen ever found in a
swimming pose. As if in the very act of swimming it had died and was
instantly covered up in the soft mud and never disturbed until Brown’s
pick revealed it to the world. I firmly believe as I have said before,
this specimen proves conclusively that the conventional pose taken of
these duck-bills as usually standing on land erect is a mistake; as I
have always believed. The one I prepared for the Victoria Museum proves
the same thing, and every one I have seen in the beds, or have found
myself, point the same way, but as it will be a costly thing to take
down all the mounts in American Museums of Cretaceous trachodonts I do
not expect to live to see my views universally put in practice.

This specimen, No. 9, I wrote of to Dr. Woodward, August 21st, 1913:
“I have uncovered enough of the floor to be able to give you some
valuable information. I have now traced the entire column, except four
feet of the caudal region. I have found one femur in position with its
tibia and fibula, one humerus and front foot, and many ribs. The most
disappointing thing: we have only found the mandibles and predentary,
the maxilla of one side, the occiput and part of the crest and the back
of the skull.”

Later we found the entire skeleton except four feet of the tail
just back of the pelvic arch, where it had been weathered out and
destroyed, and part of the skull. This skeleton was about thirty feet
long, and I considered it next in perfection to that of Mr. Brown’s
_Corythosaurus_. There were in addition large patches of the skin
impression. I show you the place where the body lay, after we had
wrapped it. It also shows the vast amount of labor required to save it.

It lay up a narrow gorge, too narrow to get a horse up it. We were
obliged to cut steps up and down the rough way from the nearest point
we could reach it from camp and Levi had to carry nearly all the water,
plaster, and burlap, and paper, etc., necessary to wrap a skeleton
nearly thirty feet long. The distance from the wagon was nearly an
eighth of a mile.

But that labor sank into insignificance compared to the labor he had
to strap beneath the specimen his burlap strips in such a way that the
rock did not fall out. It would often take him many minutes before
he could get the strip to stick. He lay on his back and patted the
plaster soaked burlap with the ends of his fingers until the blood
came. Then often the plaster would harden before he could get it to
stick. Then he had to take a new strip and go through the same hard and
patience-trying labor, filling his eyes with the burning lime. In all
the labor we do in taking up a complete skeleton, there is no part of
it that requires so much patience and so much skill as strapping the
under side.

After this specimen was ready for hauling out of the brakes we had to
build a sled road to it from the prairie and haul it to camp around the
badlands, about six miles, while it only lay about a mile from camp in
a bee-line.

Now it seems almost incredible that after over two months of such
exhausting mental, physical and soul-trying labor, it should be sent
to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by a German Raider on English
Commerce. If anything on earth can prove the wantonness of such
destruction, this is a good example. I have given fifty years freely
to science without money, often, and without price. The best that is
in me. So I could show to generations to come the wonderful works
of God in creation. Ten minutes of vandalism destroys all my labor,
my hopes, my life almost, because I never can recover from such a
blow as this. I have not told the full story yet, because the second
specimen Levi found was in many respects better than this one I have
described. It was in splendid matrix. A strong sandstone, and the bones
beautifully preserved, a specimen that could have been easily prepared.
One hind foot was all that was exposed. I could not believe that this
meant anything, but a few loose bones. It pointed heavenward, from the
side of a cliff. We followed the foot down to the body and found the
entire skeleton except a few inches of the tail and _THE HEAD_. With a
restored head, (and we found one that could have been used) as far as
the public was concerned, the British Museum could have mounted these
two lords of the ancient bayous in that great store house of treasures,
more rare than gold or silver, to be the heritage of the ages still to
come.

This too, was with the first one and went to the bottom, with the
Mount Temple and as far as I could learn, all on board. Perhaps some
time when the sea will give up her dead, these noble examples of
God’s handiwork may also be exposed to the light of day once more. I
considered from every standpoint, money or science, these two specimens
were worth double what the first two months of labor yielded up. I
never entered the Victoria Memorial Museum where we had mounted one
of the noble duck-bills without a feeling of awe, as if I stood in the
presence of God himself. It dominates everything in the Museum, and
attracts the attention of the dullest of men. How happy I was in the
thought that for countless thousands of years to come, others could
feel that same feeling of reverence for the Creator. In the twinkling
of an eye the blue Atlantic covered them. I once prepared the skeleton
of a _Megatherium_ from Brazil; it too had gone to the bottom of the
ocean, but divers had rescued it from its watery grave. I have little
hope that this will ever be done to the noble duck-bills who were sent
to Davies Locker by a German torpedo.

We discovered other fine material that was saved and the preparators
are at work on it, so I hope our last year’s labor, the most strenuous
for many years may not be entirely lost.

My dear readers my book is coming to a close. The other volume “The
Life of a Fossil Hunter” is out of print. It depends on you whether
we have another edition published. This I will gladly do, if each
reader of this one, will send me a subscription for the other. You
will certainly realize that this work, like the other has been a labor
of love. Take this volume, I am at my own personal expense issuing
five hundred copies. If I sell each copy I will not realize any more
than the cost of publication. I worked all last winter from 7 p.m. to
10 p.m. on the manuscript, and all day Saturday of each week, except
Sunday. It has taken me all winter to look after the printing of this.
My whole object has been to give the information I have acquired
through years of toil and hardship in the desolate fossil fields to the
public, so they may realize something of the wonders of Nature, and the
hope it may lead some of my readers to Nature’s God, the Triune God we
worship.


THE GRAND CANYON OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

  I have often heard the story
  Of that Mighty Canyon Grand;
  Powell pointed out the glory
  Of that deeply sculptured land.

  Where the Colorado river
  Has cut a passage deep,
  In the very heart of nature,
  With many gorges deep.

  To any doubting Thomas,
  It would almost make him smile,
  If I told him of a canyon
  Cut through earth’s crust a mile.

  But my own two eyes have seen it,
  And I’ll take the witness stand,
  Its the greatest ditch in story
  In our own historic land.

  It seems, during the Jura
  The land began to rise;
  Yes! the bottom of the ocean
  Perhaps to its surprise.

  Was lifted from the water,
  Became a level plain;
  Received the glorious sunshine,
  The first and latter rain.

  A river takes the drainage
  Back to the restless sea,
  Carves as it goes a passage
  Widening gracefully and free.

  “Tell me” asks my companion
  “How the river cuts its way,
  Where the stars faint light is shining
  In the middle of the day,

  So deep below the surface,
  That the sun’s most dazzling ray
  N’er gleams upon the water
  That is beaten into spray?”

  Well: then listen to the story
  How in ages long ago,
  The earth rose from the water
  And the land began to grow.

  As the earth was slowly rising,
  Rivers bed cut through the land,
  The rocks that tumbled in it
  The gravel, rock and sand

  Scoured out and carved the basin
  As the vast land masses rose,
  And the mighty Colorado
  Flows where it used to flow.

  For the land continued rising
  And the waters cut their way
  Through Earth’s upheaving bosom,
  Through granite, lime and clay.

  The rising cliffs receeding
  From the margins of the stream;
  Effects of frost and rainfall
  On every side are seen;

  For chips are falling ever,
  From exposed strata flanks,
  Roll down into the river,
  Leaping the waters banks,

  Fall in the whirling waters,
  That churn the rocky mass
  Against the boulders lodging
  Within the narrow pass.

  Then the great burden bearer
  Within its canyon grand,
  Bears out upon its bosom
  The wreckage of the land.

  And in the western ocean;
  ’Long California’s shore,
  The debris from Grand Canyon
  Are settling more and more.

  For near the gulf, the river
  Flows by a level floor,
  Spreads out upon the flood plain
  The ground up mountains core.


’LONG SUPERIOR’S DENTED SHORE

  Have you ever made a journey ’long Superior’s dented shore?
  Where the glory of the landscape enchant one more and more;
  Where the green tints of the water, and its gravel covered floor,
  The surface, smooth and polished like a burnished oaken door.

  The mountains on the main land grown o’er with spruces green,
  While pine and whitened birches are sprinkled in between.
  Out there, a mighty freighter loads ten thousand tons of ore.
  Rounded islands with green woods are shrouded o’er.

  Red buttressed headlands, encroaching on the shore
  Form lines of wondrous beauty around the lake’s broad floor.
  Our railway bed is blasted from the earth’s foundation stone:
  Granite, Gneiss, and Green-Rock in many a sober tone.

  O! the beauty of the hillsides, ensheathed in living green,
  While the work of the old glaciers on every side are seen;
  The Age of Ice has eaten basins in the ancient rock;
  While the stone upon the hillside lie in many polished block.

  A glorious scene of beauty, scarce marred by human hand,
  Few boats upon the water, no farmers till the land.
  Five hundred miles we’ve traveled, by lake and hill, and brake,
  Upon earth’s rocky bosom our westward way we take.

  While the gleaming surface of Superior’s mighty lake
  Indent the land around us, a glowing picture make,
  Arrayed in living colors, a fairy isle is seen.
  Red boulders strew the hillside, a background for the green.

  The famous waters of Columbia’s inland sea
  Separate two nations of brave men true and free.
  No forts on either border; no soldiers pace the shore,
  No Dreadnaught plows the water, no mighty cannon roar.

  But now the sun is setting beneath the western sea.
  His level rays are glowing on sheets of water free,
  And in the lovely gloaming upon the watery way,
  The mountains change to purple, the waters turn to grey.


THE LAURENTIAN HILLS

  I am riding on a railway that spans from sea to sea;
  Rocking on earth’s throbbing bosom, for my iron horse is free;
  How the scenes stretch out before me, as the coaches eastward roll,
  I am riding on the C.P. and to it I’m paying toll.

  I have reached a waste of waters, Superior’s mighty flood
  Indent the land before me, encroach the silent wood;
  For the vale, and gulch and valley, ever packed with spruces green,
  Mixed with the yellow poplar; with white barked birch between.

  The earth itself is covered with its own foundation rock,
  Granite, Gneiss and Green Stone, in many a mighty block,
  Carved and rounded by the Ice Cap, that once covered all the land:
  They rise in hill and buttress like some ancient castle grand.

  Birches standing, with trunks as white as snow,
  And slender spires of spruce trees, in serried ranks they grow.
  A gorgeous carpet underneath upon the rocks are spread,
  The different patterns blended might form a Titan’s bed.

  White granite peeps above it with streaks of reddish hue
  With God’s own arch above us! stars twinkling in the blue.
  Yes! I’m riding on the bosom of the oldest land that’s known,
  And Old Time, through countless ages, over it has ever flown,

  When England’s land was lifted above the ocean blue,
  The Old World is not the oldest, it should be called the new.
  O! could rocks but tell the story their rugged cliffs have know,
  They could tell us of this continent, and how it’s slowly grown.

  How the beds laid down by water, in ocean, river, lake
  Through all the changing aeons, from these rocks their tribute take.
  For the streams, (those burden bearers), on ocean floor have spread
  The loads they carry ever, to deposit on her bed.

  Granite Boulders from the hill side, choke up the rapid stream,
  They are ground by rushing water, till as pebbles they are seen,
  As the river current lessens, then are pebbles ground to sand,
  To be carried to the ocean, forming bars and banks so grand.

  Then the life that fills the ocean, the crustacean and the shell,
  When dying, left their skeletons the seas broad floor to swell.
  I can see Ontario’s mountains rise, where early life is seen,
  The mollusk of the ocean, and the sea weeds living green.

  The Laurentian Hills are rising at the margin of the sea.
  While the bordering waters throbbing with molluskan life so free,
  The globe’s thin crust is resting on the molten mass below,
  Transformed, as hard as granite, on her flanks the Trenton rest
  The land mass is slowing growing to the east, and south and west.

  Now the water of the ocean, bring forth a countless tribe,
  Of many forms of shell fish that are scattered far and wide.
  Crustaceans crowd the shore line, and that wondrous trilobite,
  Lives on through many ages till Time of chalk so white,
  So Silurian rocks are added to Laurentian narrow shore,
  And the Continents broad empire marches westward ever more.

  II

  Devonian seas are lapping round Silurian cape and bay,
  New fish life fills the waters, and over them hold sway.
  Strange forms in shield and buckler, in armor polished bright,
  Ganoids and other fishes show their colors in the light.

  I have seen a dozen fishes, impaled on block of slate
  Stand out, as carved by nature, they’re lying there in state:
  Seaweeds have left their impress in these enduring sands of Time,
  Stretched out in all their measures in many a lengthening line,
  For the ebb had stretched them seaward, while the fish swam
    ’gainst the tide,
  They were swimming toward the sea-shore, while swimming they
    have died.

  Both plants and fishes, in the old Devonian floor,
  After ages, tell the story, that the One we all adore,
  Keeps record of Creation in old oceans muddy floor.
  Footsteps of the Creator in ages that have fled,
  When a host of shells and fishes left their forms in oceans bed.

  And now the bed is lifted along the eastern shore:
  Increasing now the land mass, round Laurentian more and more,
  O! Time thou hast no limit to grasp of human mind,
  Unmeasured by the intellect of any of our kind.

  But Time to our Creator, is like forgotten fears,
  “A thousand years a single day, a single day a thousand years.”
  And let our study of the past cause reverence for His name
  Both now, and yesterday, through time, He ever is the same.
  So with these simple verses we’ll praise His Holy Name.




 A JOURNEY IN THE MONTH OF JUNE IN EASTERN CANADA


  I

  O! the glories of a journey taken in the month of June,
  When the gentle winds are sighing, and all nature is in tune:
  While the fragrance of red clover, and the green tints of the trees,
  Make me glad I am a rover, bathed in the evening breeze.

  II

  So all day I sit and wonder, on green plush I lay and ponder
      On the glorious panorama, ever new,
  And I raise my window curtain, for I’m very, very certain,
      I have never, never witnessed such a view.

  III

  O! Columbia, how I love you, where my first new breath I drew,
  What lines of grace and beauty on every side you strew.
      I am rocking on your bosom for my iron horse is free,
      And the flowers by the hillside waft their fragrance over me.

  IV

  Gazing from my open window, how my heart strings thrill, and thrill,
  At the glory of the landscape I never get my fill.
  Canadian hills embowered with crowning woods of green,
  While fields and lakes and river on either side are seen.

  V

  Now white daisies blend their colors with the darker green below,
  Or the shining yellow buttercups, their golden beauties show,
  Wild mustard grows in masses o’er many a lengthening row,
  Add color to the wheat fields stretching out, as west we go.

  VI

  Now and then, a clump of roses, add their sweetness to the breeze,
  And June air is gently sighing ’midst the verdure of the trees,
  Oh! the plain and flood and hillside, how they swiftly come and go,
  While the power of the engine rocks me gently to and fro.

  VII

  Yes! the scenes move out before me like the pictures in a show.
  While in the gentle gloaming, on wings I seem to go.
      With wondrous lines of beauty with splendid brush so free,
      For the colors of the rainbow cast their glamor over me.

  VIII

  Yes! the beauties of Dame Nature are most wonderfully fair,
  And gazing on those beauties my soul seems free from care,
  So my train swings ever westward, her coaches keeping rhyme
  To the music of dear Nature that’s never out of time.

  IX

  The birds fly up above me, and the flowers bloom below;
  For God cares for the Raven, on flowers love bestow.
  We have an earthly Eden from a Father’s loving hand,
  Angels guard us on the ocean and on the solid land,

  X

  And should we mount, as eagles, on wings in the mid air:
  In blue expanse of heaven, His love would guard us there.
  So as the night grows darker I seek my narrow berth.
  I sleep the sleep of childhood, free from the cares of earth.




 INDEX


  Acme, Alberta, 34, 51, 112, 114, 128, 134

  Advance Science, articulated skeletons, 57

  Adventure in Kansas Chalk, 70-71

  Age of Iron, 173
    Reptiles, 139, 14

  Alberta, 13, 25, 68, 69, 113-119

  Allegheny Mountains, 18

  American Museum of Natural History, 24, 27, 29, 30, 47, 52, 58,
    61, 62, 73, 94, 117, 128, 139, 150
    Paleontologist, the oldest, 26
    Paleontology, 151, 117

  Ammonites, 51

  Amphibians, 68, 182-184

  Ancient World, 184-190

  Anchylosaurus magniventris, 94

  Animals, 13

  Angiosperms, 150

  Another Strange Dinosaur, 120

  Archelon ischyros, 26

  Arizona, 66

  Arlington Cemetery, 22

  Armoured Dinosaurs from Kansas Chalk, 95

  Armored Plant Eaters, 68

  Army Building, 23

  Arthur, Port, 94

  Atlantic, 79, 100

  Auk Great, 13

  Australia, 22


  Baculites, 115

  Badlands, 134

  Bassano, 88, 108, 109

  Batracians, 96, 182

  Battle Between Dinosaurs, 108

  Bay Land Locked, 160

  Bear Paw Shales, 109, 114-118
    Mountains, 112

  Belly River Series 2, 5, 25, 66, 68, 73, 96, 111, 114-116, 130
    Description of, 73, 74
    Belongs to Pierre, 112

  Benton, Fort, 111

  Beresford, Admiral, of England, 87

  Berlin Museum, 139

  Bestrum, Mr., 91

  Big Spring, 112

  Black Feet Indian Reserve, 127

  Boat, Flat, 101

  Bog Iron Bones Enclosed in, 63

  Bone-beds, Near Top and Bottom of Badlands, 84

  Bones of Crested Dinosaur, 63

  Boulders, Lying Around, 66

  Boule, Dr., 9, 33

  Bridge at Great Falls, Montana, 33

  British Empire, 3

  British Museum of Natural History, 2, 9, 11, 64, 139, 169, 58, 61, 66,
    73, 94-98, 120, 127, 130, 131, 117, 118
    Camp, 62
    Great Collection, 73

  Brock, Dr., 7, 69

  Brontosaur, 21, 56

  Brooks, 92, 110, 133

  Brown, Dr. Barnum, 3, 25

  Bull Berry Jelly, 90


  Calgary, Alberta, 34, 36

  Cambridge, Mass., 73, 132

  Camp Above Happy Jack Ferry, 85

  Camp, This is the Richest, 54

  Champsosaurus, Found by George F. Sternberg, 84, 86, 116

  Canada, 110, 134

  Canadian Pacific Rwy., 73

  Canadian Rockies, 34
    Northern Rwy., 36

  Canyon, Our Work In a, 61

  Capital, 20

  Carbide Used for Lights on Lake, 93

  Carboniferous, 22, 180

  Carnegie, Mr., 19, 29, 56
    Museum, 4, 19, 21
    Hall of Music, 19

  Carnivore, Discovery of, 53
    Excavating, 55
    Loading, 55
    Charlie Standing in Quarry, 55
    Will Mount In Bold Relief, 58

  Carniverous Dinosaurs, 139, 143

  Carving Out an Urn, 129

  Casey, 17

  Cassowary, 61

  Casuarius, 61, 65, 116

  Central Pacific Rwy. Co., 88

  Centrosaurus, Discovered by Charles M. Sternberg, 91, 120

  Centrosaurus Prepared by Geo. F. Sternberg, 122, 124

  Ceratops, 48, 86, 91, 105, 107, 119

  Chasmosaurus, 73, 80, 82, 86, 104, 107
    Description of, 80-81
    Prepared, 82
    Ideal Picture, 83

  Chinaman Has a Hot Dish for Us, 92

  Church of England Minister, 69

  Cimoliasaurus, 177

  Claggett Shales, 113, 114, 116

  Claosaurus, 96

  Clark, Mr., Head Photographic Division, 69

  Clidastes, 21, 162

  Coal Mining In Indiana, 18
    At Drumheller, 36
    In Milk River Country, 117, 130
    Miners Tunnel, 135
    Plants, 182

  Coffee, 76
    McCheche, 44
    Beaver, 64, 70
    Seven Mile, 4
    Butte, 176
    Eagle, 112

  Collecting Dinosaurs, 46-48

  Concretions, 52, 53, 66

  Conrad, 159

  Cope, Prof., 7, 11, 27, 61, 82, 111, 113-118, 120, 132, 134,
    159, 169, 184
    Collection, 25, 139

  Corythosaurus, George Finds Skeleton, 86, 87

  Coulee, Verdegris, 129

  County, Albany, Wyo., 20

  Courage Needed, 64

  Coutts, 34, 110

  Cow Boys, 67
    Island, 111, 114

  Creator, For Millions of Years the, 65

  Creatures Having Seed in Themselves, 65

  Creek, Lance, 11, 26
    Plum, 14
    Old Woman, 27
    Willow, 50
    Bull Pond, 51
    Sand, 61, 73
    Rosebud, 35
    Knee Hill, 35
    Tributary, 35
    Berry, 52, 68
    One Tree, 75
    Hackberry, 75, 95, 160
    Hell, 94
    Dog, 113-115, 121

  Crested Dinosaurs, Description of, 62, 67

  Cretaceous, 11, 51, 53, 60, 66, 114, 140

  Crinoids, 164

  Crocodile Bones, 68, 84, 143

  Crow Indians Reserve, 33


  Dakota Group, 13

  Dead Lodge Canyon, 114-119

  Denhart Restoration, 61

  Dike Volcanic, 112

  Dinosaurs, 3, 98, 101, 35
    Of Red Deer River, 2, 21, 139

  Diplodocus Carnegie, 20, 57

  Director Geological Survey, 55, 58, 110

  Discovery of Fossil Fish, 12

  Discovery of Two Skeletons, 60, 62
    Specimens of Corythosaurus, 65, 66

  Disney, Mr. Patrick, 87, 88

  Douglass, 20, 56

  Dowling, D. B., 110, 117

  Dreverman, Dr. F., 7

  Drumheller, Alberta, 35, 44, 48, 53

  Duck-Billed Dinosaurs, 7, 8, 68


  Eagle Sandstone, 113, 116

  Easton, A. E., 3, 33, 36, 41, 48

  Edgemont, South Dakota, 5, 33

  Edmonton Series, 25, 51, 62, 66, 84, 96, 113, 114, 117
    Of Brackish Water, 33, 38
    Description of, 35

  Egyptians Ancient, 7

  Elkader, 70

  England, 87

  Eryops, 185

  Euoplocephalus, 66, 97

  Excavation In Face of Cliff, 67

  Exhibition Room, 30, 65


  Faces of Bluff Covered With Cherty Fragments, 43

  Falls, Great, 111

  Fern Trees, 22

  Ferry Loveland, 62
    Man Stretched Wire Across River, 51, 52

  Field Notes For 1913, 72

  Figs, 9

  Flesh Eaters, 68

  Florida, 9, 177

  Fluting Beautiful, 66

  Fog Horn, 174

  Fossil Leaves Locality, 53

  Fox Hills, 114

  Frankfort on the Main, 7

  Frenchman, 175


  Galyean, Hope to Reach House, 75, 76
    John, 76

  Geological Survey of Canada, 2, 14, 15, 21, 33, 48, 53, 68, 69, 80
    Gallery, 12
    And Paleontology, 114

  Germany, Made in, 68

  Gibbs, Mr. Hugh, 26

  Gidley, Mr., 22, 56

  Gila Monster, 60

  Gilmore, C. W., 22, 56

  God, Creative Power of, 65

  Goldsmith’s Poem, 170

  Gorges Deep, 115

  Gorgosaurus libratus, Lambe, 58, 59-60, 75, 107-110

  Gothic Towers, 72

  Gove County, Kansas, 70

  Granger, Mr., 58

  Great Northern Rwy., 111

  Gryposaurus, of Lambe, 68, 73, 75, 118


  Hadrosaurus, 96

  Hall of Fossil Vertebrates, 67

  Hall, Steve, Hotel, 52

  Haploscapha, 159

  Happy Jack Ferry, 94, 102, 109

  Hatcher, Dr. J. B., 17

  Hawkins, Waterhouse, 57

  Head Collector and Preparator, 33

  Holland, Dr., 55

  Holy Ground, Our Laboratory, 65

  Horizon, We Got in a New, 52

  Hunting Dinosaurs, 78
    Big Game, 94


  Ideal Pictures of Edmonton Times, 38-41, 135-155
    Duck-Bills, 144, 147
    Cretaceous Life, 160-179
    Tylosaur, 160, 161
    Pteranodont, 164
    Portheus, 169
    Snout Fishes, 177-178

  Iguanodonts, 57

  Illinois, 16, 17

  Indiana, 17

  Indianapolis, 18

  Indian Traveled on Trail of, 67

  Inoceramus Shell, 25, 177

  International Line, 27, 34, 129

  Ireland’s Empress, 174


  Jackson, Mr., 87

  Jasperson, 18

  Jehu Rode Like, 70

  Jessup, Morris, 25

  Johnson, Mr., 87

  Judith River Post Office, 113, 114, 134, 142
    Country, 119


  Kansas, 159, 162, 165

  Kansas Chalk, 1, 12, 25, 27, 54, 95, 97, 100
    Western, 11, 132

  Keewatin Steamer, 93

  Kendall, Montana, 116

  Knowlton, Dr. F. H., 129, 166

  Kindness of Directors, Dr. Brock and Mr. R. G. McConnell, 69

  Kritosaurus, 118


  Labyrinth of Intricate Gorges, 47

  Lady of the North, 3

  Laelaps, 57

  Lambe, Mr., 30, 58, 61, 62, 65, 68, 72, 76, 88, 96, 118, 120

  Lance Beds, 11, 96, 128

  Land Slides, 50

  Laramie, 11

  Lawrence, Kansas, 2, 13, 16, 162

  Leidy, Prof., 96, 118

  Lepidodendron, 180

  Lethbridge, Alberta, 34

  Life of a Fossil Hunter, 17, 118

  Light Houses, 97

  Livingston’s Ranch, 70

  London Illustrated News, 11, 169

  Loveland Ferry, 96

  Lull, Prof., 26, 34

  Lusk, Wyoming, 14


  Mammalian Remains, 69

  Marsh, Prof., O. C., 21, 26, 40, 65, 86, 96, 182

  Matthew, Dr., 58

  Maud, 156-178, 183, 184, 187

  McBride’s House, 76

  McConnell, Mr. R. G., 127

  McGee, Jack, 49, 52, 55
    Dan, 44, 47

  McKeon Ranch in Wyoming, 4

  McNicoll, Port, 93, 172

  Medicine Hat, 132, 133

  Miller, Mr., 181

  Moa, the Great, 13

  Monarch, Under a, 2

  Monster Fish, 12

  Montana, 121, 129, 135, 142

  Monument Rocks, 70

  Morophus, 21

  Mosasaurian Bay, 164, 167

  Mosasaurus, 162, 164

  Motor Boat, 85

  Mounting Trachodon Skeleton, 44, 64, 65, 84
    Titanotherium Skeleton, 14, 28, 29
    Two Skulls of Centrosaurus, 122
    Charlie’s Gorgosaurus, 48

  Moving Pictures, 92

  Munich, Bavaria, 139

  Museum of Comparative Zoology, 161

  Museum of Kansas University, 162

  Music Hall, 18

  Myledaphus, 84


  Narrow Escape When Men Loaded Trachodon, 48

  Natural History Museum Paris, 33

  Nature’s Heart, 65, 165

  Nevada, 56

  New Mexican Trachodont, 72

  New York, 26

  New Zealand, 60

  Niobrara County, Wyoming, 14

  Nolan, Dr., 57

  Northern Lights, 93


  Ohio, 18

  Oligocene, Sculptury of the, 14, 15

  Open Mounts the Process, 37, 58

  Oregon, 25

  Osborn, Prof. H. F., 25, 150, 153

  Ostrea congesta, 15

  Outlying Butte, 66

  Oxford University, 87


  Paleontological Museum, 19

  Paleontology, 8

  Palmetto Palm, 9

  Paradise of Dry Bones, 26

  Parks, Prof., 92

  Paris, 9, 13, 48
    Museum, 134

  Patience Necessary in Preparation of Dinosaurs, 64

  Pennsylvania, 18
    Route, 16
    Avenue, 23

  Permian Beds of Texas, 75, 132, 182, 187

  Peterson, Mr., 58

  Petrified Bones of Duck-Bills Poorly Preserved, 63

  Photographs Taken by George, Charles and Levi Sternberg, 69

  Picture of Carniverous Dinosaur Life, 60
    Early Lance Creek Beds, 9

  Picture of Centrosaurus, 126

  Pierre, Fort, 34, 50, 51, 113, 114

  Pillars, Mush-Room-Like, 66

  Pittsburgh, 18, 22, 55, 162

  Plaster Process of Protecting Fossils, 45

  Platanus, 128

  Platecarpus, 16

  Plated Dinosaurs, 88, 90, 95

  Plesiosaur, 175, 177

  Pleistocene, 50

  Poems, 200-223

  Poets Tribute to Soldier Dead, 24

  Port Arthur, 94, 172

  Portheus, 11, 19, 25, 171

  Pose of Saurians, 60

  Prairie Margin Slides Down, 42

  Preparing, George at Work, 123

  Proceedings, Kansas Academy, 94

  Proceedings Society, 3

  Problem I, The Environment of Dinosaurs, 34, 40, 41
    II, How Did the River Cut Its Gorge? 37, 38, 42, 43

  Professor Sternberg, 13

  Prosaurolophus, 66, 86

  Protostega gigas, 21

  Pycraft, 11, 12

  Pyramids Fluted, 72


  Quinter, Kansas, 33, 70


  River, Kaskaskia, 17
    Ohio, 18
    Cheyenne, 5, 10
    Red Deer, 25, 42, 43, 54, 68, 69, 96, 114, 116, 132, 133
    Milk, 122, 127-129
    Judith, 109-118
    Missouri, 112, 115-119, 129, 142
    Mississippi, 16
    John Day, 25
    Belly, 94, 98, 114
    St. Lawrence, 100
    Red Deer, Dinosaurs, 64, 125
      Trip Down, 49-53
    Big Wichita, 181
    Swift Current, 109

  Recession of Cliffs, 41

  Red Letter Day, 43

  Royal Museum, Toronto, 93

  Redwood Leaves, 43


  Sailors, Funeral of the Maine, 23

  Scenery on Red Deer River, 64

  Schuchert, Professor, 26

  Scientific Men, Mistakes of, 80

  Scott, Prof. W. B., 57

  Scott’s Famous Poem, 141

  Scow Building of, etc., 49, 85, 88, 91

  Seamen’s Hills, 14

  Secretary Academy of Science, 57

  Senckenberg Museum, 7, 9, 98

  Shaw, The Ferry Man, 133

  Siliceous Concretions, 67

  Siren Sounds Alarm, 94

  Site, Moved Camp Down to new, 54

  Skeleton Platecarpus, 162

  Skull of Crested Dinosaur, 63

  Soft Soap, After a Rain Like, 43

  Soldiers of the Union, 28

  Soo Locks, 94

  South Dakota, 26

  Sphenodon, 60

  Stanton, Mr., 114

  Station, Milk River, 128

  Stegosaur, 22, 56, 68, 94, 95

  St. Elmo’s Fire First Seen on Land, 71, 72

  Stephanosaurus of Lambe, 65, 67
    The Nearly Complete Skeleton, 65
    Described, 62-65

  Sternberg, General George M., 22
    Charles H., 16, 65, 68, 72-3-4, 31, 52, 54, 84, 85, 95, 122, 127
    George F., 16, 25, 27, 33, 34, 47, 48, 69, 73, 74, 3, 9, 11-14,
     52, 54, 64, 69, 77, 83, 86
    Charles M., 16, 27, 3, 5, 9, 14, 25, 49, 51-58, 62, 84, 85, 86, 88,
     120-129
    Levi, 2, 33, 71-75, 45, 45, 49, 54, 14, 124
    Charles H., A Collector for Fifty Years, 27
    Charles M., Discovers Trachodont Skeleton, 43

  Steveville, 73, 77, 52, 78, 102, 133

  St. Louis, 16

  Storm, Great Thunder, 70, 71

  Styracosaurus, 101-102

  Story of An Old River Bed, 14
    Of the Discovery of Charlie’s Trachodon, 5

  Styracosaurus, 102-107

  Summary of the Geological Survey, 68

  Superior, 94, 93

  Sweet Grass, Montana, 34

  Swift Current, 88


  Teeming East, 16

  Terre Haute, 17

  Texas, 75, 181

  Theropoda, 68

  Timber, Destruction of, 18

  Titanotherium, 14, 27, 28

  Trachodon, 57, 62, 79, 84, 118
    Found by Charles M. Sternberg, 67
    A Swimming, 34
    A Feeding, 39
    Description of, 39, 40
    Death From Carnivore annectens, Marsh, 41

  Trail Cowboys Traveled on it, 67
    Princeton, 67

  Trees Palms, Redwoods, Sycamores, Figs, Magnolias, 33

  Trego County, Kansas, 16

  Triceratops, 33, 81, 104

  Trip to the East, 16-19
    Pittsburgh, 66
    Washington, 58
    Philadelphia, 57

  Toronto, Canada, 93

  Tübingen, University, 25

  Turtles, 68
    Found by George F., 77

  Tylosaurus, 13, 160-162

  Tyrant of the Everglades, 75


  Under Ground Channels, 63

  Union Jack, 3

  Uintacrinus socialis, 165

  United States, 3
    National Museum of the, 55

  Upper Cretaceous, 13

  Urn, Carving An, 129

  Utterback Specimen, 4


  Vandalism, 176

  Valley of Red Deer River, 35
    Milk River, 129

  Vassar College, 162

  Victoria Memorial Museum, 2, 7, 9, 10, 14, 45, 53, 125

  Venus, 38

  Verdegris Coulee, 129

  Vertebrate Paleontologist, 61, 80, 176
    Paleontology, 24
    Fossils, 33

  Views of Old Paleontologists, 8

  Vulcanism, 112, 113, 115, 129


  Ward, Dr., 166

  Washington, 22, 56

  Weed, 110

  We Explore Dead Lodge Canyon, 49

  Weiland, Dr., 26, 176, 177

  We Spy Out the Land, 53

  Western Kansas, 150

  Williston, Dr. S. W., 26, 176, 177

  Wilson, 166

  Wonders of the Permian, 180-199

  Work on Charlie’s Gryposaurus, 72

  Wyoming, 35, 96, 122, 149


  Yale, 26, 95, 176




=“THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER”=

IS OUT OF PRINT.

I own the electrotypes, halftones and copyright and will publish a new
edition on receipt of a hundred subscriptions at $1.75 each postpaid.

                                                  CHARLES H. STERNBERG,
                                                              _Author_.

A few extracts from Reviews of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter.”

=Chicago Herald, March 20th, 1909.=

“Any body will instantly feel the spell of interest in Mr. Sternberg’s
autobiography ‘The Life of a Fossil Hunter.’ Mr. Sternberg writes
simply, unpretentiously, entertainingly, and there runs all through his
book a curious union of scientific devotion and religious reverence
that is as unusual as it is charming.”

=San Francisco Argonaut, June 5th, 1909.=

“There are few hunters of live game who can tell so good a story, who
has seen so much adventure, or experienced so many escapes. Such a
record would in any case be interesting, but it becomes fascinating
from the exuberance of its style and hearty enthusiasm that animates
every page.”

=Boston Living Age, March 20th, 1909.=

“His name, as affixed to his specimens, is the only witness to his
labors which will remain after him, except the work of three sons whom
he has trained to follow in his footsteps; but he has been happy and
his single-hearted story is a book to renew our faith in man’s capacity
to work for pure delight in work.”

=Interior, Chicago, June 17th, 1909.=

“But he not only stuck to his self-imposed task but raised a whole
family of boys, every one of whom took to fossil hunting as a duckling
does to water. Best of all, to the Christian reader, it will seem the
author kept his faith in God and the Bible unimpaired, and his pages
are full of ascriptions of praise to the Maker of heaven and earth.”

=Lawrence Gazette, March 8th, 1909.=

“A remarkable book. The author has a way of telling things that is
charming because of its simplicity. He uses scientific terms only when
necessary, and a child could read and understand this book.”


Transcriber’s Notes.

Italic text is indicated with _underscores_, bold text with =equals=.
Small/mixed capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.

Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected
silently. Inconsistent hyphenation/spelling has been normalised.

The author’s use of “Carniverous” (carnivorous) is retained as is the
use of both “armored” and “armoured”. Instances of lilly/lillies have
been corrected to lily/lilies. Likewise butress/ed/es to buttress/ed/es.

Transposition of the illustrations for figures 35 and 38 has been
corrected. An errata slip noting the error has been discarded.

A single footnote has been placed after the paragraph from which it is
referenced.

Other errors addressed:

page 19 “delved like Vulvan” corrected to “delved like Vulcan”.

page 45 “as were the bones, checked” corrected to “as were the bones,
cracked”.

page 123 “securely to the crest” corrected to “securely to the skull”.

Fig. 31 (a photograph) in the list of illustrations was incorrectly
described as “Drawing of skull by Weber” The description has been
amended to match the caption “Skull of Chasmosaurus restored by Weber.”

page 90 “the moment it was” changed to “and the moment it was”

page 24 “On times eternal camping ground” corrected to “On Fame’s
eternal camping ground”. Misquoted from “Bivouac of the Dead”.

page 201 Erroneous text discarded (in italics).

you will see there what I had learned up to the time of writing, the
process by which fossils are made. _I ing, of the process by which
fossils are made. I all fossils._ I found here in the Belly River
Series entirely different conditions.

page 172 “McNickels”; page 229 “McNickle” ; page 93 “McNickles”. All
corrected to “McNicoll” (Port McNicoll, Ontario).

page 17 “Waskaskaia”; page 230 “Waskaskia”. Both corrected to
“Kaskaskia” (Illinois river).

pages 93 & 229 “Keetewin” corrected to “Keewatin” (Passenger liner
operating between Port Arthur and Port McNicoll).

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77814 ***