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[Illustration:
CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
]
American Nature Series
Group IV. Working with Nature
THE LIFE
OF A
FOSSIL HUNTER
BY
CHARLES H. STERNBERG
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1909
Copyright, 1909,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
_Published, February, 1909_
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
I wish to call the attention of the reader of my story “The Life of a
Fossil Hunter” to the fact that I am under obligations especially to
Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, President and Curator of Paleontology of
the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He has supplied me
with many of the most beautiful of the illustrations that illumine these
pages and has assisted the work in many ways.
I would also express my gratitude to Miss Margaret Wagenalls of New
York, who edited the manuscript; to Prof. Dunlap of the Kansas State
University, for his kindly criticisms; and to Dr. W. K. Gregory,
Lecturer on Zoology at Columbia University, whose untiring efforts have
brought the book to its present form.
I hope it may awaken a wide interest in the study of ancient life, and I
thank my friends everywhere who are contributing to that end.
CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
LAWRENCE, KANSAS,
_January, 1909_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN xi
I. EARLY DAYS AND WORK IN THE DAKOTA GROUP OF THE CRETACEOUS 1
II. FIRST EXPEDITION TO THE KANSAS CHALK (1876) 32
III. EXPEDITION WITH PROFESSOR COPE TO THE BAD LANDS OF THE
UPPER CRETACEOUS (1876) 61
IV. FURTHER WORK IN THE KANSAS CHALK (1877) 99
V. DISCOVERY OF THE LOUP FORK BEDS OF KANSAS AND SUBSEQUENT
WORK THERE (1877, 1882–1884) 120
VI. EXPEDITION TO THE OREGON DESERT IN 1877 144
VII. EXPEDITION TO THE JOHN DAY RIVER IN 1878 170
VIII. FIRST EXPEDITION TO THE PERMIAN OF TEXAS IN 1882 205
IX. EXPEDITIONS IN THE PERMIAN OF TEXAS FOR PROFESSOR COPE
(1895–1897) 230
X. IN THE RED BEDS OF TEXAS FOR THE ROYAL MUSEUM OF MUNICH
(1901) 244
XI. CONCLUSION 265
INDEX 283
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CHARLES H. STERNBERG Frontispiece
ROCKS OF LARAMIE BEDS ON SOUTH SCHNEIDER CREEK, CONVERSE
CO., WYOMING 16
WEATHERED ROCKS AND LARAMIE BEDS NEAR SOUTH SCHNEIDER
CREEK 16
MUSHROOM-LIKE CONCRETION KNOWN AS PULPIT ROCK 17
FOSSIL LEAVES OF _Sassafras dissectum_. (After
Lesquereux.) 20
FOSSIL LEAVES. _a_, UNOPENED LEAF NODULE. _b_, NODULE
OPENED TO SHOW FOSSIL LEAF. _c, d, e, f_, VARIOUS FORMS
OF FOSSIL LEAVES 21
FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM DR. LESQUEREUX TO THE AUTHOR 24
SKULL AND FRONT LIMB OF _Clidastes tortor_ 44
SKELETON OF _Clidastes tortor_ 45
SKELETON OF RAM-NOSED TYLOSAUR, _Tylosaurus dyspelor_ 45
RAM-NOSED TYLOSAUR, _Tylosaurus dyspelor_. Restoration by
Osborn and Knight 50
SKULL OF THE FLAT-WRISTED MOSASAUR, _Platecarpus
coryphæus_ 51
RESTORATION OF KANSAS CRETACEOUS ANIMALS. (From drawing by
S. Prentice, after Williston.) _a_, _Unitacrinus
socialis_; _b_, _Clidastes velox_; _c_, _Ornithostoma
ingens_ 56
GIANT CRETACEOUS FISH, _Portheus molossus_ (above),
COMPARED WITH A SIX-FOOT MODERN TARPON (below) 57
LOWER JAW OF _Trachodon marginatus_, SHOWING SUCCESSIVE
LAYERS OF TEETH. TOP AND SIDE VIEWS OF A TOOTH OF
_Myledaphus bipartitus_. (After Osborn and Lambe.) 76
SKULL OF A DUCK-BILLED DINOSAUR, _Diclonius_, FOUR FEET IN
LENGTH 77
PROFESSOR E. D. COPE 78
BRONTOSAURUS OR THUNDER LIZARD. Restoration by Osborn and
Knight 79
FOSSIL SHELLS, _Haploscapha grandis_. (After Cope.) 108
CHARLES STERNBERG AND SON TAKING UP A LARGE SLAB OF
FOSSILS FROM A CHALK BED IN GOVE CO., KANSAS 109
CAMP AND WAGON OF THE FOSSIL HUNTERS ON GRASSWOOD CREEK,
CONVERSE CO., WYOMING 109
SKELETON OF THE PLESIOSAUR, _Dolichorhynchus osborni_.
(After Williston.) 114
FOSSIL LIMB BONES OF THE GIANT SEA TORTOISE, _Protostega
gigas_ 115
FOSSIL SHELL OF GIANT LAND TURTLE, _Testudo orthopygia_ 122
THE SNAKE-NECKED ELASMOSAURUS, _Elasmosaurus platyurus_.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight 123
THREE-TOED HORSE, _Hypohippus_. (After Gidley.) 132
FOSSIL RHINOCEROS, _Teleoceras fossiger_. (After Osborn.) 133
SKULL AND TUSKS OF IMPERIAL MAMMOTH, _Elephas imperator_ 178
FOSSIL-BEARING CLIFFS. (After Merriam.) UPPER JOHN DAY
EXPOSURE 179
FOSSIL-BEARING CLIFFS. (After Merriam.) MIDDLE JOHN DAY
EXPOSURE 179
FOSSIL-BEARING CLIFFS. (After Merriam.) MASCALL FORMATION 202
FOSSIL-BEARING CLIFFS. (After Merriam.) CLARNO FORMATION 202
SKULL OF GREAT SABER-TOOTHED TIGER, _Pogonodon
platycopis_. (After Cope.) 203
SKELETON OF FIN-BACKED LIZARD, _Naosaurus claviger_ 234
FIN-BACKED LIZARD, _Naosaurus claviger_. Restoration by
Osborn and Knight 235
FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM PROF. E. D. COPE TO THE AUTHOR 238
FOSSIL SKULL OF GIANT SALAMANDER, _Diplocaulus
magnicornis_. (After Broili.) 240
PROFESSOR HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 241
FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM DR. KARL VON ZITTEL TO THE AUTHOR 246
DR. KARL VON ZITTEL 256
SHELL OF _Toxochelys bauri?_ 257
NIOBRARA GROUP, CRETACEOUS CHALK WITH CAP ROCK OF LOUP
FORK TERTIARY, KNOWN AS CASTLE ROCK, GOVE CO., KANSAS 262
CHALK OF KANSAS, KNOWN AS THE COFFEE MILL. Hell Creek 262
BONES OF _Platecarpus coryphæus_ 263
SKELETON OF _Hesperornis regalis_, THE GIANT-TOOTHED BIRD
OF THE KANSAS CRETACEOUS 266
SLAB OF FOSSIL CRINOIDS, _Uintacrinus socialis_,
CONTAINING 160 CALYCES, COVERING FOUR BY SEVEN FEET 267
SKULL AND HORNS OF GIANT BISON FROM HOXIE, KANSAS. SPREAD
OF HORN CORES SIX FEET, ONE INCH; LENGTH ALONG CURVE,
EIGHT FEET 268
JAW OF COLUMBIAN MAMMOTH, _Elephas columbi_ 269
THREE-HORNED DINOSAUR, _Triceratops sp._ Restoration by
Osborn and Knight 270
DUCK-BILLED DINOSAUR, _Trachodon mirabilis_. Restoration
by Osborn and Knight 271
INTRODUCTION
_By_ HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN,
_President and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology of the American Museum
of Natural History, New York_
Our bookshelves contain the lives or narratives of adventure of many
hunters of living game, but the life of a fossil hunter has never been
written before. Both are in the closest touch with nature and,
therefore, full of interest. The one is as full of adventure, excitement
and depression, hope and failure, as the other, yet there is ever the
great difference that the hunter of live game, thorough sportsman though
he may be, is always bringing live animals nearer to death and
extinction, whereas the fossil hunter is always seeking to bring extinct
animals back to life. This revivification of the past, of the forms
which once graced the forests and plains, and rivers and seas, is
attended with as great fascination as the quest of live game, and to my
mind is a still more honorable and noble pursuit.
The richness of the great American fossil fields, which extend over the
vast arid and semi-arid area of the West, scattered over both the great
plains region and the great mountain region, has resulted in the
creation of a distinctively American profession: that of fossil hunting.
The fossil hunter must first of all be a scientific enthusiast. He must
be willing to endure all kinds of hardships, to suffer cold in the early
spring and the late autumn and early winter months, to suffer intense
heat and the glare of the sun in summer months, and he must be prepared
to drink alkali water, and in some regions to fight off the attack of
the mosquito and other pests. He must be something of an engineer in
order to be able to handle large masses of stone and transport them over
roadless wastes of desert to the nearest shipping point; he must have a
delicate and skilful touch to preserve the least fragments of bone when
fractured; he must be content with very plain living, because the
profession is seldom, if ever, remunerative, and he is almost invariably
underpaid; he must find his chief reward and stimulus in the sense of
discovery and in the despatching of specimens to museums which he has
never seen for the benefit of a public which has little knowledge or
appreciation of the self-sacrifices which the fossil hunter has made.
The fossil fields of America have fortunately attracted a number of such
devoted explorers, and one of the pioneers on the honorable list is the
author of this work, who by his untiring energy has contributed some of
the finest specimens which now adorn the shelves and cases of many of
the great museums of America and Europe.
Although special explorations have been described, sometimes in
considerable detail, this is the first time that the “life of a fossil
hunter” has been written, and it is fitting that it comes from the pen
of the oldest living representative of this distinctively American
profession. The name of Charles H. Sternberg is attached to discoveries
in many parts of the West; discoveries which have formed distinct
contributions to science, to the advance of paleontology, to our
knowledge of the wonderful ancient life of North America. His is a
career full of adventure, of self-sacrifice, worthy of lasting record
and recognition by all lovers of nature.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AND WORK IN THE DAKOTA GROUP OF THE CRETACEOUS
I do not remember when I first began collecting fossils, but I have
always loved nature.
Fifteen years of my early life were spent in Otsego County, New York, at
dear old Hartwick Seminary, where my father, the Rev. Dr. Levi
Sternberg, was principal for fourteen years, and my grandfather, Dr.
George B. Miller, a much-loved, devout man, professor of theology for
thirty-five. The lovely valley of the Susquehanna, in which it stands,
lies five miles below Cooperstown, the birthplace of the Walter Scott of
America, James Fenimore Cooper, and my boyhood was spent among scenes
which he has made famous. Often my companions and I have gone picnicking
on Otsego Lake, shouting to call up the echo, and spreading our
tablecloth on shore beneath the very tree from which the catamount was
once about to spring upon terrified Elizabeth Temple.
My greatest pleasure in those early days and best, was to live with a
darling cousin in the woods. There among the majestic trees,—maples,
hickories, pines, and hemlocks,—we used to build sylvan retreats,
weaving willow twigs in and out among the poles which I cut for
supports; and there, to those great trees, I delivered my boy orations.
We delighted also to visit and explore Moss Pond, a body of water on top
of the hills across the river, surrounded entirely by sponge moss. We
could “teeter” across the moss to a log that gave us support, and catch
blind bullheads, or eat our lunch in the cool, dense hemlock woods that
surrounded the water, where the heavy branches, intertwined like mighty
arms, shut away the light, so that even at midday the sun could barely
pierce their shadows.
How I loved flowers! I carried to my mother the first crocus bloom that
showed its head above the melting snow, the trailing arbutus, and the
tender foliage of the wintergreen. Later in the season I gathered for
her the yellow cowslip and fragrant water-lily; and when autumn frosts
had tinged the leaves with crimson and gold I filled her arms with a
glorious wealth of color.
Even in those early days I used to cut out shells from the limestone
strata of the region with whatever tools were at hand, but they were
admired chiefly as examples of the wonderful power of running water to
carve rocks into the semblance of shells. Or if one of the more
observant remarked that these shells looked very much as if they had
been alive once, the only theory that would account for their presence
and yet sustain the belief that the world was only six thousand years
old, was that the Almighty, who created the rocks, could easily, at the
same time, have created the ancient plants and animals as fossils, just
as they were found.
I remember a rich find I made in the garret of an uncle in Ames, New
York,—a cradle filled with fossil shells and crystals of quartz. They
had been collected by my uncle’s brother, who, fortunately, as my uncle
said, had died early, before bringing disgrace upon the family by
wasting his time wandering over the hills and gathering stones. All the
large specimens he had collected had been thrown away, and the smaller
ones in the old cradle had long been forgotten. I was welcome to all my
uncle’s buggy could carry when he took me home, and I can never forget
the joy of going over that material again and again, selecting the
specimens that appealed most to my sense of the beautiful and the
wonderful. I labeled them all “From Uncle James,” and it greatly
astonished a dear aunt of mine, to whom I gave them some years later
when we moved West, to find in the collection a lot of baculites,
labeled “Worms from Uncle James.”
When I was ten years old, I met with an accident from which I have never
completely recovered. I remember the wild chase I was making after an
older boy, over the hay-mows and piles of shocked grain in my father’s
barn. On the floor below, an old-fashioned thresher, one of the first of
its kind, was making an ear-splitting noise, while outside the two
horses, hitched to an inclined plane, climbed incessantly, but never
reached the top.
The boy climbed a shock of oats on the scaffold in the peak of the barn,
and “Charley-boy,” as my mother called me, following him, slipped
through a hole in the top of the ladder which had been covered by the
settling oats, and fell twenty feet to the floor below. The older boy
climbed swiftly down and carried me home insensible to my mother.
Our family physician thought that only a sprain was the result, and
bandaged the injured limb; but, as a matter of fact, the fibula of the
left leg had been dislocated, so that there was much suffering and a
little crippled boy going about among the hills on crutches.
The leg never grew quite strong again, and some years later gave me a
good deal of trouble. In 1872 I was in charge of a ranch in Kansas, and
during November of that year a great sleet storm covered the whole
central part of the state. In order to water my cattle, which were
scattered over a range of several thousand acres on Elm Creek, I was
obliged to follow around small bands of them to their accustomed
watering-places and cut the ice for them. The water that splashed over
my clothing froze solid, and the result was that inflammatory rheumatism
settled in the lame leg. I sat in a leathern chair all winter close to a
boxwood stove, tended by my dear mother, who never left me day or night.
When the inflammation subsided, the knee joint had become ankylosed, and
in order to avoid going on crutches all my life, I lay in the hospital
at Fort Riley for three months, all alone in a great ward, and had the
limb straightened by a special machine. So skilfully did the army
surgeon do this work that I threw away crutches and cane, and, although
the leg has always been stiff, I have since walked thousands of miles
among the fossiliferous beds in the desolate fields of the West.
In 1865, when I was fifteen years old, my father accepted the
principalship of the Iowa Lutheran College at Albion, Marshall County,
and the broken hill country of my boyhood days was replaced by the
plains and water courses of the Middle West.
Two years later my twin brother and I emigrated to an older brother’s
ranch in Ellsworth County, Kansas, two and a half miles south of Fort
Harker, now known as Kanopolis. This post was at that time the terminus
of the Kansas Division of the Union Pacific, and almost daily train-load
after train-load of prairie schooners, drawn by oxen, burros, or mules,
pulled out from it over the old Butterfield and Santa Fé trails, the one
leading up the Smoky Hill, the other through the valley of the Arkansas
to Denver and the Southwest.
In spring great herds of buffalo followed the tender grass northward,
returning to the South in the fall; and one bright day my brother and I
started out on our first buffalo hunt. Driving a team of Indian ponies
hitched to a light spring wagon, we soon left the few settlements
behind, and reached the level prairie to the southwest, near old Fort
Zaro, a deserted one-company post on the Santa Fé Trail. At this time it
had been appropriated by a cattleman who had a small herd grazing in the
vicinity.
When within a few miles of this post, we saw a large herd of buffalo
lying down a mile away. It was no easy matter to crawl toward them over
the plain, pushing myself along without raising my body above the short
grass, but after strenuous efforts I got within shooting distance
without disturbing them, and was resting for a shot, when the rancher
rode through the herd and sent them all off at a lope. Much angered and
almost tempted to turn my gun on the man, I returned to the wagon, and
we drove on across country that had been cropped as if by a great herd
of sheep by the thousands of buffalo that had passed that way on their
journey south.
Anxious to find picketing-ground and water, we reached the Arkansas
River, where in a swale covered with grass and willows were paths cut by
the buffalo. I lay down in one of these, and bringing my gun to my
shoulder, was just drawing bead, when a large animal rushed across my
line of vision at right angles to the trail. I pulled the trigger, and
down went the brown mass in a heap on the ground.
Swinging my gun above my head, I rushed forward shouting, “I’ve killed a
buffalo!”—to find that I had shot a Texas cow. Terrified at the thought
of its owner’s anger, we rushed back to the wagon, and, whipping up the
ponies, sped away as if the furies were after us. But cooler second
thoughts led us to the conclusion that the cow had come north with the
buffalo, and was as much our prey as the buffalo themselves.
Just before sunset we reached a part of the country through which the
buffalo had not passed, where a rich carpet of grass, covering all the
plain, offered plenty of food for our tired ponies. Here we were
delighted to find, standing in a ravine, an old bull buffalo, which had
been driven out of the herd to die. Concealing ourselves behind the
carcass of a cow, we opened fire upon him from our Spencer carbines, and
continued to riddle his poor old body with leaden slugs until his
struggles ceased. Even then, when he had lain down to rise no more, we
crawled up behind him and threw stones at him, to make sure that he was
dead. We found his flesh too tough for food; but it was an exciting
event to us two boys to kill this massive beast, in earlier days perhaps
the leader of the herd.
In this connection I might tell of a chase I had several years later,
while living on a ranch in eastern Ellsworth County. I saw a huge
buffalo bull come loping along from the hills, headed for a section of
land that was inclosed by a wire fence. On the other side of this
section there was a piece of timber-land, and fearing that if he got
into the dense timber I should lose him, I rode after him at the top of
my speed.
When his lowered head struck the wire fence it flew up like a spring
gate and immediately closed down behind him. In order to follow, I had
either to cut the wire or go out of my way to a gate half a mile to the
south. I decided on the latter course, and applied quirt and spur to my
horse, but upon reaching the gate, discovered my escaping quarry already
halfway across the section. I got just near enough to put a bullet into
his rump as he passed through the fence on the other side, and
disappeared in the dense woods beyond.
In my excitement I shouted to my pony, and, dismounting and standing on
the wire to hold it down, yelled at him to come across. But a sudden fit
of obstinacy had seized him, and he would not come. I had to let the
fence up while I thrashed him, and then as soon as I got it under my
feet again, he pulled back as before. We repeated this performance until
I was exhausted and gave up the struggle.
But upon casting a look of despair in the direction of the vanished
buffalo, I was both astonished and ashamed to see him standing under an
elm tree not ten feet away, covered up all except his eyes by a great
wild grapevine, and gazing in mute astonishment at the struggle between
Nimrod and his pony. I have always regretted that I took advantage of
the confidence he placed in me, for as soon as I could control my
jumping nerves, I shot the noble beast behind the shoulder, and he fell.
I saw my last herd of buffalo in Scott County, Kansas, in 1877.
Antelope, however, continued to be abundant as late as 1884, and only
two years ago I saw a couple of them among some cattle near Monument
Rocks, in Gove County.
In camp, during those early days, we were rarely out of antelope meat,
and even now my mouth waters at the thought of the delicious tenderloin,
soaked first in salt water to season it and remove the blood, then
covered with cracker dust, and fried in a skillet of boiling lard. In
those days a hind quarter could be hung up under the wagon in the
hottest part of summer, and not spoil. The wind hermetically sealed it,
and there were no blow-flies then. The early settlers of a new country
bring with them, and protect, their enemies, and destroy their friends,
the skunks, badgers, wildcats, and coyotes, as well as hawks, eagles,
and snakes, because they kill a chicken or two as a change from their
usual diet of prairie dogs and rabbits.
In those pioneer days the Kiowas, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other Indian
tribes made constant inroads upon the venturesome settler who, following
the advice of Horace Greeley, had come West to grow up with the country.
I remember when old Santante, a chief of the Kiowas, came to the post in
a government ambulance, which he had captured on one of his raids. In
time of peace, the Indians belong to the Interior Department of the
government, so that all the officer in command at the fort could do was
to extend the old chief the courtesy of the army and care of himself and
team. Once, at the old stone sutler’s store, I heard him remark, after
he had filled himself well with whisky, “All the property on the Smoky
Hill is mine. I want it, and then I want hair.”
He got both the following year.
In July, 1867, owing to the fear of an Indian outrage, General A. J.
Smith gave us at the ranch a guard of ten colored soldiers under a
colored sergeant, and all the settlers gathered in the stockade, a
structure about twenty feet long and fourteen wide, built by setting a
row of cottonwood logs in a trench and roofing them over with split
logs, brush, and earth. During the height of the excitement, the women
and children slept on one side of the building in a long bed on the
floor, and the men on the other side.
The night of the third of July was so sultry that I concluded to sleep
outside on a hay-covered shed. At the first streak of dawn I was
awakened by the report of a Winchester, and, springing up, heard the
sergeant call to his men, who were scattered in rifle pits around the
building, to fall in line.
As soon as he had them lined up, he ordered them to fire across the
river in the direction of some cottonwoods, to which a band of Indians
had retreated. The whites came forward with guns in their hands and
offered to join in the fight, but the sergeant commanded: “Let the
citizens keep in the rear.” This, indeed, they were very willing to do
when the order was given, “Fire at will!” and the soldiers began sending
leaden balls whizzing through the air in every conceivable arc, but
never in a straight line, toward the enemy, who were supposed to be
lying on the ground.
As soon as it was light my brother and I explored the river and found a
place where seven braves, in their moccasined feet, had run across a wet
sandbar in the direction of the cottonwoods, as the sergeant had said.
Their pony trails could be easily seen in the high, wet grass.
The party in the stockade were not reassured to hear the tramp of a
large body of horsemen, especially as the soldiers had fired away all
their ammunition; but the welcome clank of sabers and jingle of spurs
laid their fears to rest, and soon a couple of troops of cavalry, with
an officer in command, rode up through the gloom.
After the sergeant had been severely reprimanded for wasting his
ammunition, the scout Wild Bill was ordered to explore the country for
Indian signs. But, although the tracks could not have been plainer, his
report was so reassuring that the whole command returned to the Fort.
Some hours later I spied this famous scout at the sutler’s store, his
chair tilted back against the stone wall, his two ivory-mounted
revolvers dangling at his belt, the target of all eyes among the
garrison loafers. As I came up this gallant called out, “Well,
Sternberg, your boys were pretty well frightened this morning by some
buffalo that came down to water.”
“Buffalo!” I said; “that trail was made by our old cows two weeks ago.”
Later the general in command told me that they had prepared for a big
hop at the Fort on the night of the fourth, and that Bill did not report
the Indian tracks because he did not want to be sent off on a long scout
just then.
In the unsettled state of the country at this time there were other
dangers to be guarded against beside that of Indians, as I learned to my
cost.
As a boy of seventeen, it was my duty on the ranch to haul milk, butter,
eggs, and vegetables to Fort Harker for sale. I cared for my pony
myself, and in order to get the milk and other food to the Fort in time
for the soldiers’ five-o’clock breakfast, I had to go without my own.
One day I had a number of bills to collect from the officers, but as I
was unusually tired, and the officers were not out of bed when I called,
I put the bills in my inside pocket and started home.
As was my custom, after leaving the garrison I lay down on the
wagon-seat and went to sleep, letting my faithful horse carry me home of
his own accord. I have no recollection of what happened afterwards, but
when I reached the ranch my brothers found me sitting up in the wagon
moaning and swinging my arms, with the blood flowing from a slung-shot
wound in my forehead. I had been struck down in my sleep and robbed of
all the money I had on my person, as it happened only about five
dollars.
Providentially our nearest neighbor, D. B. Long, was a retired hospital
steward, and the post surgeon, Dr. B. F. Fryer, who was sent for
immediately, was just ready to drive to town with his team of fleet
little black ponies. He reached the ranch in an incredibly short time,
and, although respiration had ceased, those two faithful men kept up
artificial respiration for hours. My oldest brother, Dr. Sternberg, for
years Surgeon-General of the Army, was also sent for, and I found him
lying on a mattress by my side when I regained consciousness two weeks
later.
I might tell also of the ruffians who at one time held Ellsworth City in
a grip of iron, and how, until they killed each other off or moved
further west with the railroad, the dead-cart used to pass down the
street every morning to pick up the bodies of those who had been killed
in the saloons the night before, and thrown out on the pavement to be
hauled away.
But, although I should like to recall more of the incidents connected
with the opening up of a new country, time presses, and I must pass on
to an account of my work as a fossil hunter.
I had not been long in this part of the country before I found that the
neighboring hills, topped with red sandstone, contained, in isolated
places, from a few feet to a mile in diameter and scattered through a
wide expanse of country, the impressions of leaves like those of our
existing forests.
The rocks consisted of red, white, and brown sandstone, with interlaid
beds of variously-colored clays; while here and there, scattered through
the formation, were vast concretions of very hard flint-like sandstone,
often standing on softer rocks that had been weathered away into
columns, the whole giving the effect of giant mushrooms, as seen in the
cuts (Figs. 1–3).
This formation, resting unconformably on the upper carboniferous rocks,
belongs to the Dakota Group of the Cretaceous Period. The sedimentary
rocks were laid down during the Cretaceous Period, the closing period of
the “Age of Reptiles,” in a great ocean, whose shore line enters Kansas
at the mouth of Cow Creek on the Arkansas River, and extending in a
northwesterly direction in the vicinity of Beatrice, Nebraska, touches
Iowa, and passes on to Greenland.
I was carried away at this time by the thoughts that had been surging
through the hearts of men since Darwin bade them turn to nature for the
answers to their problems concerning the plants and animals of this
earth.
How often in imagination I have rolled back the years and pictured
central Kansas, now raised two thousand feet above sea level, as a group
of islands scattered about in a semi-tropical sea! There are no frosts
and few insect pests to mar the foliage of the great forests that grow
along its shores, and the ripe leaves fall gently into the sand, to be
covered up by the incoming tide and to form impressions and counterparts
of themselves as perfect as if a Divine hand had stamped them in
yielding wax.
Go back with me, dear reader, and see the treeless plains of to-day
covered with forests. Here rises the stately column of a redwood; there
a magnolia opens its fragrant blossoms; and yonder stands a fig tree.
There is no human hand to gather its luscious fruit, but we can imagine
that the Creator walked among the trees in the cool of the evening,
inhaling the incense wafted to Him as a thank-offering for their being.
All His works magnify Him. The cinnamon sends forth its perfume beside
the sassafras; linden and birch, sweet gum and persimmon, wild cherry
and poplar mingle with each other. The five-lobed sarsaparilla vine
encircles the tree-trunks, and in the shade grows a pretty fern. Many
other beautiful plant forms grace the landscape, but the glorious
picture is only for him who gathers the remains of these forests, and by
the power of his imagination puts life into them; for it is some five
million years, according to the great Dana of my childhood days, since
the trees of this Kansas forest lifted their mighty trunks to the sun.
[Illustration:
FIG. 1.—ROCKS OF LARAMIE BEDS ON SOUTH SCHNEIDER CREEK, CONVERSE
COUNTY, WYOMING.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 2.—WEATHERED ROCKS AND LARAMIE BEDS NEAR SOUTH SCHNEIDER CREEK.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 3.—MUSHROOM-LIKE CONCRETION KNOWN AS PULPIT ROCK.
Elm Creek, Kansas, near Sternberg’s ranch. (From Trans. Kan. Acad.
Sci.)
]
At the age of seventeen, therefore, I made up my mind what part I should
play in life, and determined that whatever it might cost me in
privation, danger, and solitude, I would make it my business to collect
facts from the crust of the earth; that thus men might learn more of
“the introduction and succession of life on our earth.”
My father was unable to see the practical side of the work. He told me
that if I had been a rich man’s son, it would doubtless be an enjoyable
way of passing my time, but as I should have to earn a living, I ought
to turn to some other business. I say here, however, lest I forget it,
that, although my struggle for a livelihood has been hard, often,
indeed, bitter, I have always been financially better off as a collector
than when I have wasted, speaking from the point of view of science,
some of the most precious days of my life attempting to make money by
farming or in some other business, so that I might live at home and
avoid the hardships and exposures of camp life.
With collecting-bag over my shoulder and pick in hand, I wandered over
the hills of Ellsworth County. If I chanced upon a locality rich in
fossil leaves, thrilled with a joy that knows no comparison, I walked on
air as I carried my trophies home; while if night overtook me with an
empty bag, I could scarcely drag my weary limbs along.
Among the rich localities that I discovered was one which I called
“Sassafras Hollow,” because of the countless sassafras leaves I quarried
there. It is situated about a mile southeast of the schoolhouse on
Thompson Creek, in the Hudson brothers’ neighborhood, and lies at the
head of a narrow ravine in a ledge of sandstone, with a spring beneath.
Here too, the noted paleobotanist, Dr. Leo Lesquereux, collected fossils
in 1872, securing among other specimens a large, beautiful leaf which he
named in my honor “_Protophyllum sternbergii_.”
I have a vivid recollection of the discovery of another locality. One
night I dreamed that I was on the river, where the Smoky Hill cuts into
its northern bank, three miles southeast of Fort Harker. A perpendicular
face in the colored clay impinges on the stream, and just below this
cliff is the mouth of a shallow ravine that heads in the prairie half a
mile above.
In my dream, I walked up this ravine and was at once attracted by a
large cone-shaped hill, separated from a knoll to the south by a lateral
ravine. On either slope were many chunks of rock, which the frost had
loosened from the ledges above. The spaces left vacant in these rocks by
the decayed leaves had accumulated moisture, and this moisture, when it
froze, had had enough expansive power to split the rock apart and
display the impressions of the leaves.
Other masses of rock had broken in such a way that the spaces once
filled by the midribs and stems of the leaves admitted grass roots; and
their rootlets, seeking the tiny channels left by the ribs and veins of
the leaves, had, with the power of growing plants, opened the doors of
these prisoners, shut up in the heart of the rock for millions of years.
I went to the place and found everything just as it had been in my
dream.
Two of the largest leaves known to the Dakota Group were taken from this
place. One, a great three-lobed leaf, the stem passing through an
ear-like projection at its base, Dr. Lesquereux called _Aspidophyllum
trilobatum_; the other, equally large,—over a foot in diameter,—and
three-lobed too, but indented with large teeth, he called _Sassafras
dissectum_ (Fig. 4).
I believe I am the only fossil hunter who has collected from this
locality. Probably my eyes saw the specimens while I was chasing an
antelope or stray cow and too much occupied with the work in hand to
take note of them consciously, until they were revealed to me by the
dream, the only one in my experience that ever came true. I tell this
story to show how deeply I was interested in these fossils.
My first collection, or rather the cream of it, was sent to Professor
Spencer F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution. The following is the
letter which I received from him:
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Washington, June 8, 1870.
Dear Sir:—We are duly in receipt of your letter of May 28th,
announcing the transmission of the fossil plants collected by your
brother and yourself, and shall look forward with much interest to
their arrival. As soon as possible after they reach us, we shall
submit them to competent scientific investigation, and report to you
the result.
Very respectfully yours, etc.,
SPENCER F. BAIRD,
Assistant Secretary in Charge.
There was no money in fossils at that early day, but I prized more
highly than money the promise in the letter that my specimens would be
studied by competent authority, and that I should receive credit for my
discoveries.
[Illustration:
FIG. 4.—FOSSIL LEAVES OF _Sassafras dissectum_.
(After Lesquereux.)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 5.—_a_, UNOPENED LEAF NODULE; _b_, NODULE OPENED TO SHOW FOSSIL
LEAF; _c, d, e, f_, VARIOUS FORMS OF FOSSIL LEAVES.
]
The specimens were sent to Dr. John Strong Newberry, professor in
Columbia University and State Geologist of Ohio. He did not find
opportunity at that time to publish the results, but long years
afterwards, in 1898, I received from Dr. Arthur Hollick a copy of “Later
Flora of North America,” a posthumous work of Dr. Newberry’s. Turning
instantly to the magnificent plates, I recognized some of my early
specimens, the first I ever collected that were of value to science.
Although, owing to the long delay in publication, I lost credit for
them, and the duplicates which I had given to a friend had been used by
Lesquereux to illustrate some new species accredited to that friend
instead of to their rightful discoverer, Dr. Newberry kindly
acknowledged my work on p. 133 of his book, where he says: “The leaf
figured on Plate X and that represented on Plate XI were included in a
collection made by Charles H. Sternberg, and Lesquereux has done only
justice to him by attaching his name to the finest species contained in
the large collection of fossil plants he made there,” that is, at
Sassafras Hollow.
In 1872, just before Lesquereux’s great work, “The Cretaceous Flora,”
appeared, I learned that the famous botanist was a guest of Lieutenant
Benteen, the commander of Fort Harker. Fortunately, I had retained rough
sketches of the first specimens I had sent to the Smithsonian
Institution. So with these I started for the Post, where I found a
reception in progress in honor of the noted guest.
I was introduced to the venerable botanist by his own son, who spoke to
him in French, as he was almost deaf. When I displayed my sketches, he
took me to one side, and in a corner of the room I told him the story of
my discoveries. His eyes shone when he examined the drawings. “This is a
new species,” he said, “and this, and this. Here is one described and
illustrated from poorer material.”
I do not remember how long we talked. I only know that the golden
moments sped by all too rapidly; and from that hour until his death in
1889 we were in constant correspondence.
After this all my collections were sent to him for description. Over
four hundred species of plants like those of our existing forests along
the Mexican Gulf, some beautiful vines, a few ferns, and even the fruit
of a fig, and a magnolia flower petal, the only petal so far found in
the coarse sandstone of the Dakota Group, have rewarded my earnest
efforts. The fragrance of this lovely flower seems wafted down to us
through the myriads of ages since it bloomed.
Dr. Arthur Hollick, in his paper, “A Fossil Petal and a Fruit from the
Cretaceous (Dakota Group) of Kansas,” in Contributions from the New York
Botanical Garden, No. 31, says, on page 102: “Included in a collection
of fossil-plant remains from the Cretaceous (Dakota Group) of Kansas,
recently obtained by the New York Botanical Garden from Charles H.
Sternberg of Lawrence, Kansas, are two exceedingly interesting
specimens,—one representing a large petal, the other a fleshy fruit.
Petals are exceedingly rare, and I am not acquainted with any published
figure of anything of the kind which can compare with ours in regard to
either size or satisfactory condition of preservation.”
Of the fig, the Doctor remarks: “The fruit is plainly that of a fig,
and, although some twenty-three species of _Ficus_ have been described
from the Dakota Group, they were based upon leaf impressions. This
fossil has every appearance of many dried herbarium specimens, and it is
evident that it must have possessed considerable consistency in order to
retain its original shape, as it has done to a certain extent, under the
pressure to which it must have been subjected.”
In 1888 I sent over three thousand leaf impressions from the Dakota
sandstone to Dr. Lesquereux, and he selected from them over three
hundred and fifty typical specimens, many of them new, for the National
Museum. Hundreds of others, identified by him, were afterwards purchased
by R. D. Lacoe, of Pittston, Pa., and presented to the Museum.
So feeble had the great botanist become in these last years of his life,
that friends passed before his failing eyes the trays containing these
great collections.
In my estimation, America can show no life more unselfishly devoted to
science than that of Lesquereux, probably the most scholarly and
conscientious botanist of his day. He once wrote me that he received a
salary of five dollars a day from the U. S. Geological Survey, and out
of this he had to pay his artist. He labored with unfailing enthusiasm
to complete his monumental work, “The Flora of the Dakota Group,” but by
the irony of fate, he never saw his beloved book in print. It was
published by the Government five years after his death, under the able
editorship of Dr. F. H. Knowlton.
He passed away at the age of eighty-three.
“Born in the heart of Switzerland’s mountain grandeur,” he once said,
“my associations have been almost all of a scientific nature. I have
lived with nature,—the rocks, the trees, the flowers. They know me, I
know them. Everything else is dead to me.”
[Illustration]
Columbus O 14th April 75
Mr Ch. Sternberg Fort Harker
My dearest
I much approve of your purpose of studying medicine. Your taste for
natural history will help you much and encourage you. But allow me
still to say to you as a friend would do that you can not expect to
become useful to others and to yourself in science except by hard
work, pursued with patience and a final purpose. Science is a high
mountain. To go up to its top or at least high enough to gain free
atmosphere and wide horizon necessitates hard climbing, through
brushes, thickets, rocks, etc. Then when from the beginning look
around for commodious and soft paths merely enter the gloom of the
woods at the base. They are seen from nobody and see nothing but
undistinct forms and because there horizon is thus liberated to
darkness they think there is nothing else and nothing more to learn
from high above toward the top of the mountain. Moreover there is
not a true hard step as Science or in life which does not give its
reward in one way or another. While we have not a single moment of
lazziness of unmerited comfortable rest, which does not bring us
some kind of disappointment and has sent of be fraid by a little
more trouble and word.
Yours very truly
L. Lesquereux
It was my good fortune to be in constant correspondence with Lesquereux,
and his letters, which I need not say I prize highly, have done more,
perhaps, than any other thing to fix my determination that, come what
might, I would be a fossil hunter and add my quota to human knowledge.
The letter here reproduced has been as a lodestar to lead me on past all
discouragements in the path which as a boy of seventeen I set out to
follow. May it shed light upon the life of some other straggler!
In 1897, not having the means to go into the vertebrate fields of
western Kansas, I spent three months in the Dakota Group, although I
knew that I had already supplied most of the museums of the world with
examples of its flora, and that there was little interest in or demand
for the leaves.
I secured over three thousand leaves, however, and paid first-class
freight on them to my home at Lawrence. Then I hauled them out to my
little twenty-acre farm, four miles southeast of town, and pitched my 9
× 9 wall-tent for a workshop, flooring it and putting up a stove. There
I worked from November to May, standing on my feet on an average of
fourteen hours a day, with my face to the opening of the tent for light,
and my back to the stove. At night I worked over a coal-oil lamp.
With a chisel-edged hammer weighing two ounces, I trimmed off the rough
stone from the margin of the nodules, as illustrated in the woodcuts by
Christian Weber of New York (Fig. 5, _c_, _d_, _e_, and _f_), a labor of
love on his part, for which I am deeply grateful. I smoothed down the
rock with emery-stone also, and with a No. 1 needle pried away the stone
from the petioles, leaving the impression as if it were the leaf itself
standing up in bold relief, thus bringing out all its beauty. One of my
neighbors, after examining the prepared specimens, remarked, “You must
have taken a long time to carve those things. Why, they look just like
leaves!”
When no more loving labor could be bestowed on them without risk of
injuring the specimens, I laid them away in trays, to be numbered and
identified. I knew that some authorities demanded the specimens in
payment for the labor of identification, and as I had to make a living
out of my work, this would never do for me. So after Lesquereux’s death
I undertook the work of identification myself, although I confess it
hurt my conscience, as I had never had the training of a botanical
authority. I was greatly relieved, therefore, when, after selling two
hundred and fifty specimens to the New York Botanical Gardens, I asked
Dr. Arthur Hollick whether my identifications were correct, to receive
the answer that upon a casual examination he could find no reason to
make any changes in my names. I was certainly much encouraged by such
words from this eminent authority in fossil botany.
To return to my great collection from the Dakota Group, I spent nine
months of incessant labor upon it, and my readers may be surprised to
learn that I was delighted when Professor Macbride, of the University of
Iowa, purchased it for the munificent sum of three hundred and fifty
dollars, the price I put upon it. My delight was even greater when I
received the following letter, which is now and was then more highly
prized than the check which it enclosed.
STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
BOTANY.
Iowa City, Iowa, May 1, 1898.
DEAR MR. STERNBERG:
The boxes are all safely here. We have at present no place for the
display of the specimens, but have opened the first three cases and
are delighted with the beauty of the material. I hope next year to
have a case for fossil plants, when I shall certainly make a display
of these beautiful leaves, and quote you as collector. I should
think the National Museum would give you employment all the time.
I trust you may have a pleasant and profitable summer, and if in
future I can in any way serve you, kindly advise me.
Very truly yours,
THOMAS K. MACBRIDE.
This small sum enabled me to go with my son George into the chalk of
Kansas, where we discovered the splendid specimen of a mosasaur, now in
the museum of Iowa University. But for the timely assistance given me
when I most needed help, it is doubtful whether Iowa would have secured
this treasure. My months of patient labor on the leaves had convinced
the authorities that my work on the mosasaur would be faithfully done.
Before closing this account of my work in the Dakota Group, I should
like to say a few words about the manner in which the nodules are formed
around leaf impressions, a subject of which I have made a careful study
during years of exploration. The illustrations (Fig. 5, _a_ and _b_)
show the nodules before they are opened, and the open specimens before
they have been trimmed, as in the other cuts.
The mother rock, or matrix, as it is called, from which these
concretions come, is quite soft and easily disintegrates into yellowish
sand under the influences of the weather. Through this yellowish
sandstone are scattered countless leaf impressions and their
counterparts, but on account of the softness of the matrix it is
impossible to work out any leaves from the inside of the rock masses,
and we should lose them altogether were it not for the following natural
process:
Falling from the trees that grew along the shore of the Cretaceous
Ocean, these leaves were covered with sand by the incoming tide. Some,
falling stem first, were turned over into a U-shape; others are found
lying flat, and others again at various angles. The sand, accumulating
through the years, finally became consolidated, and, being in course of
time exposed to the air, began to “weather.” In the meantime the iron
coloring matter of the vegetation had been dissolved out by the water
and distributed through the rock mass. As the rock weathers away, the
leaf impressions are hardened by the iron that has been dissolved out of
the sandy mass by water holding acids in solution.
As the soft rock about them continues to wear away, the nodules begin to
appear above the surface, at first only as bumps slightly elevated above
the surrounding rock, but in time as complete concretions, with the form
of the leaves imprisoned within, which are left standing on pedestals no
thicker than a lead pencil.
Then the first storm of rain or hail breaks them from their moorings;
they become independent, are reduced in size, and constantly hardened,
so that often a nodule is almost pure iron ore a fraction of an inch in
thickness.
So the process goes on and will continue until all the leaves within the
parent rock have been protected by an iron envelope; and it is this
natural process alone which can save these beautiful impressions from
falling to pieces when the sand is freed from the rock by
disintegration.
The locality from which I collected these specimens I have named the
_Betulites_ locality, on account of the abundance of birch leaves of
many varieties which have been found there. It was discovered by the
late Judge E. P. West, collector for the University of Kansas, and
Professor Lesquereux honored him by calling one species _Betulites
westii_. He made a wonderful collection of Dakota leaves for the
University, many of them new to science. The locality is about a mile in
length and tops the highest hills in Ellsworth County.
I have no record of the thousands of fossil leaves I have collected from
the sandstone of central Kansas. I have never kept a single specimen for
myself, although I love them dearly, and it has often been hard to give
them up. But the object of my life has been to advance human knowledge,
and that could not be accomplished if I kept my best specimens to
gratify myself. They had to go, and they went, often for less than they
cost me in labor and expense, into the hands of those who could give
authoritative knowledge of them to the world, and preserve them in great
museums for the benefit of all.
One thing I have demanded as my right, in my opinion an inalienable
right, although I am sorry to say that there are those who have denied
it to me,—I demand that my name appear as collector on all the material
which I have gathered from the rocks of the earth.
I might have sold to showmen or dealers; in fact I have the assurance of
one of the largest dealers in America that I made a great mistake in
selling directly to museums instead of through him. If I had done as he
advised, the thousands of fossils I have collected would have cost the
museums fifty per cent. more than they have, and my work would have been
measured by the money these dealers would have been pleased to allow me,
and I should never have been known as one of those who have devoted
their lives to the advancement of paleontology.