MY FIRST EXPEDITION TO THE PERMIAN OF TEXAS, 1882
My first expedition to the Permian of Texas was made in 1882, while I
was in charge of collecting parties for the Museum of Comparative
Zoology of Harvard University.
I left the station at North Cambridge about the fifteenth of December,
and reached Dallas on the twenty-first, with the address of A. R.
Roessler; but I was told at the post-office that there was no such man
and no such address in the city. I had been depending absolutely upon
the information which I hoped to receive from this Mr. Roessler, as I
myself had no more idea as to the whereabouts of the Permian beds than a
new-born child. Dr. Hayden had written me to follow up Red River until I
found the red beds, which had colored the whole flood-plain of the
valley, and I had seen the red mud at Texarkana as I entered the state;
but it would take years to explore the whole valley of that great
stream. I felt that I had come upon a wild-goose chase, and I suppose
showed my dismay in my face, for the postmaster asked if he could help
me. I told him my troubles, and he said that there was a man in town, a
Professor W. A. Cummins, who had been Cope’s assistant the year before.
Greatly cheered, I went to the man’s house posthaste, to be met at the
door by his wife, who told me that the Professor was in Austin.
Whereupon my spirits dropped below zero again. But if a girl’s face is
her fortune, so is a man’s sometimes, for I gained Mrs. Cummins’
sympathy at once. When I told her why I had come to Texas, she answered,
“Why, I was with Professor Cummins on his expedition to the Permian
beds,” and proceeded to give me all the information which I thought
necessary.
I learned that they had made their headquarters at Seymour, in Baylor
County, between the Brazos and Wichita rivers, and I supposed that
anyone in Seymour could tell me the exact localities from which the
fossils came. Later I found to my sorrow that this was not the case; and
I wasted months of careful exploration over barren beds before I found
the horizon that yielded the wonderful batrachians and reptiles of which
I had come in search.
Much elated, I took the train for Gordon, a cattlemen’s town south of
Seymour, and the point nearest to it by rail. I arrived there on
Christmas Eve. I was the only passenger to leave the cars and was
welcomed by about twenty cowboys, who were just beginning to paint the
town red. The leader asked me where I came from, and I answered
promptly, “From Boston.”
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“To the best hotel in town,” said I.
“All right!” he said. “We’ll take you there.” And sure enough, they did.
They formed in double file and put me in the middle of their ranks. Then
the two men ahead of me laid their Winchesters over my shoulders from in
front, and the two men behind crossed these guns with their own, and at
the word, “Fire at will!” the whole command opened fire and kept it up
all the way to the hotel. There a girl appeared, carrying a lamp with no
chimney, and the men, facing the porch, allowed me to go into the
waiting room. I turned first, and made a little speech, thanking them
for their kind reception and remarking that if I were not so poor, I
should stand treat for the whole crowd. This satisfied them, and
shouting “All right!” they went off to continue their nonsense until
they were all drunk.
I hired the son of the hotel keeper, a Mr. Hamman, put my baggage in his
wagon, and started on the journey north to my headquarters at Seymour,
which we reached eight days later. Here I got off the track again, for
although everyone in town knew Professor Cummins, no one could tell
where he had found his fossils. “Over in the brakes,” was all the
information anyone could give. Finally a man named Turner asked me to
come over to his cattle range on the middle fork of the Wichita, as the
country was cut up into canyons and ridges and denuded, so that I should
be likely to find fossils. He knew of some mastodon bones in the
vicinity, he said. So I went with him.
At one place the road led us across the narrows, where there is scarcely
room for a wagon road between the brakes of the Brazos and the Big
Wichita. Looking south, shallow ravines led to the valley of the Brazos,
while to the north were deep gulches and mounds capped with white ledges
of gypsum with red beds of clay below. I had reached at last the red
beds of Texas.
An interesting phenomenon is to be observed here—the bed of the Big
Wichita is one hundred and seventy-five feet lower than that of the
Brazos. North of the Brazos, along a line that extends through Baylor
County, the country has been lifted up and disturbed by pressure from
below, while south of that line, the only disturbance in the strata has
been due to erosion. Everywhere in the red beds of the Wichita valley
are signs of an elevation of the earth’s crust, and for miles down the
stream one comes upon miniature mountains with the strata turned up at
all angles. The river valley occupies a fault.
Very beautiful indeed was the view when we got in sight of the brakes of
the Big Wichita. As far as the eye could see stretched miniature Bad
Lands, with rounded knobs, deep canyons, bluffs, and ravines. The
prevailing color of the strata was Indian red, but beds of white gypsum
and of greenish sandstone relieved the sameness. Sometimes seams of
gypsum filled cracks in the strata, forming dikes a few inches in
thickness.
Between the hills grew patches of grass, a welcome sight to our horses,
for we had passed through a country devoid of vegetation. The fall
before, the army worm had eaten the ground clean of everything that was
eatable. We pitched our camp near a ditch that had been cut through the
sediment which overspread the flood-plain.
The day after pitching camp, I heard George Hamman calling me, and
crossing the bridge, saw him beckoning me to follow him. He gathered his
pockets full of cobblestones as he went along, and when he reached the
edge of the ditch a little way below the crossing, he began to throw the
stones at something. I ran up to him, and heard the rattle of snakes,
but could not see any until, resting my hand on his shoulder, I lifted
myself on my toes and saw, on the other side of the ditch, a cave with a
broad floor. Lying singly or knotted together in gorgon spheres, with
heads sticking out in all directions, were hundreds of large
rattlesnakes, which had come out of the cracks in the earth to bask in
the sun on this sheltered floor. They had become terribly irritated by
the blows of the stones which Hamman was hurling at them, and were
rattling in chorus and striking out in all directions, biting themselves
and each other. Suddenly one rattled in the high grass at our very feet,
and looking down, we saw a big fellow making ready to strike. As quick
as a flash Hamman threw himself over backward, knocking me down, and the
instant he touched the ground, turned a complete somerset. While I lay
there, overcome with laughter, he turned two more, and finding himself
on the road, started for camp on a run. I was too hysterical with
laughter to help myself, and lay there, while the snake continued to
sound its rattle and dart out its forked tongue, swinging its head back
and forth above its coiled body. When George saw my predicament, he was
brave enough to come back and pull me out of reach of his lordship’s
fangs. Then we were mean enough to kill him. He measured five feet in
length.
[Illustration:
FIG. 32.—SKELETON OF FIN-BACKED LIZARD, _Naosaurus claviger_.
Collected by Charles Sternberg in the Permian Beds of the Big Wichita
Valley, Baylor Co., Texas, in the winter of 1896. By permission of
Prof. H. F. Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History.
(Photo. by Anderson)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 33.—FIN-BACKED LIZARD, _Naosaurus claviger_.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From model in American Museum of
Natural History.)
]
The valley contained thousands of wild turkeys, and it was a fine sight
to see them come down in great droves from the hills at night to roost
in the trees below. On the level prairie there were many antelope, also;
and wild cats and coyotes were seen nearly every day. I remember one
day, when crossing a low level prairie covered with bushes a couple of
feet in height, seeing at my left a coyote which was running along in a
straight line, with its nose pointed toward a certain spot, like a
pointer dog after a prairie chicken. My interest was aroused, and to
increase my curiosity, I caught sight of a short-tailed cat, the
Canadian lynx, crawling along the ground in the same direction. I knew
that they were both trailing some prey which each, unknown to the other,
had scented, and imagining that it might be a calf, I shouted, as I did
not want to see it torn to pieces. This startled the cat, and drove her
off at a tangent to her trail. The coyote continued his course, but did
not stop, for a Texas cow had run to the point toward which he was
traveling, and stood with lowered horns, ready to repel his assault;
while her calf sprang up and deliberately proceeded to take advantage of
the situation to get his dinner.
In this region, as in the Kansas chalk beds, the question of water gave
us a great deal of trouble. All the water in the river is that which
goes by the name of alkali in the West, being thoroughly impregnated
with salt and other mineral ingredients. There are, moreover, no wells
or springs in the red beds. The surface rock is porous, and the water
sinks through it to the compact gray beds below, from which it drains
off into the river. These gray beds are some distance below the surface,
and so far as I know, have never been reached in digging for water. One
is, therefore, forced to depend upon rain water. This is collected
either in artificial tanks built by the cattlemen, or in natural tanks,
sometimes along the creek beds, but usually in the flood-plain in old
creek beds, where the fine red mud has been puddled by cattle, perhaps,
or in the olden days, by buffalo. These ponds hold water for years,
although often they become very foul from the cattle that frequent and
wade into them in summer to get away from the flies.
It is an odd sight to a stranger in the valley of the Big Wichita to see
the rain come rushing down the hills. It soon becomes as thick as cream
with the fine red clay, and to think of depending upon such water for
drinking and cooking purposes is revolting to one who remembers the
sparkling springs and clear wells of the East or any mountainous
country. During quiet days, when the wind was not blowing, the red mud
would settle in the bottom of the tanks, but one had to be careful not
to pull out one’s pail suddenly or the water would instantly thicken
with mud from the bottom.
Nothing would settle this water but boiling it, although it might be
cleared a little by the pulp of cactus leaves. I have sometimes gone to
the trouble of peeling the broad leaves of the prickly pear and beating
them into a mucilaginous pulp to throw into a pail of muddy water. The
mud attached itself to this material and sank with it to the bottom; but
even then the clarified liquid remaining on top did not make a very
tempting drink. I soon got used to the thick red water, however, as had
the other inhabitants of the country, and for six seasons drank it
thankfully, when I was thirsty. When a man is thirsty, he drinks first
and tastes the water afterwards. I once asked an old cowman what he did
for drinking water on the range, and he answered, “Wherever and whatever
a cow can drink, I can.” And cows will take filthy water, if they can
get no other.
All that winter I worked in these desolate beds, walking over thousands
of acres of denuded rock, searching without success for the fossil
fields. The dominant color of these beds is red, but the tints vary so
that the eye is dazzled and wearied by the constant change. There are
countless concretions too, all of which had to be looked over. If fine
specimens had rewarded the labor, all would have been well, but I know
of no work more trying than spending day after day in a fruitless
search.
At last Hamman, having fattened his horses on two-dollar corn, started a
quarrel with me, so that he might have an excuse for deserting me, and
drove off with the team, which I had hired for some time longer, leaving
me alone, thirty miles from town. Fortunately, however, I found a good,
honest Irishman, Pat Whelan by name, who became not only a splendid
assistant, but a true friend. Poor fellow! I learned a few years ago
that he had frozen to death in Montana.
One warm, sultry day I sent him in to town for provisions. I had no tent
at that time, but he left me the wagon sheet, and I had camped on the
south side of a large tree, which was so effectually covered with green
briers as to be an almost impenetrable defense against the north wind.
I was in the field after Mr. Whelan left me, and noticing the Texas
cattle coming from the prairie to the heavy timber, I concluded,
although there was not a cloud in sight, that they had scented a
norther. Rushing to camp, I began rapidly to make preparations for the
storm. First I cut a couple of crotches and sank them well into the
ground on the south side of the brier-covered tree. Then I put up a
ridgepole and stretched over it the wagon sheet, which I fastened
securely to the ground on either side. I also heaped dirt on the edges,
to keep out the snow. I thus had a dog tent, opening toward the northern
barrier and toward the south.
There was plenty of fallen wood lying about, and I devoted every moment
and all my strength to cutting it up and dragging it to the tent. I must
have got several cords together before I heard the wind howling in the
heavy timber to the north. I piled up this supply of fuel at the opening
toward the green brier thicket, and built a big fire at the mouth of the
tent.
Soon an awful storm was upon me, all alone, thirty miles from any human
habitation. How the wind moaned through the creaking branches! A dense
darkness spread like a pall over the heavens, and the shrieks and wails
of the tempest echoed through the woods like the cries of lost souls.
Then snow and sleet began to fall in fitful gusts, and beat upon the
thin canvas that was my only shelter. At such a time a man loses much of
his confidence in himself. Pretty small I felt myself when measured with
that storm, which bent the great cottonwoods and elms like reeds before
it.
After supper, tired out with my unwonted exertions, I fell asleep.
Whenever the fire sank down and the cold became severe, I roused myself
and piled fresh fuel on the dying embers, and when they blazed up again,
dropped off once more. Three days and three nights that norther lasted.
I understood then why the people of the Southland speak of them as they
do and dread their coming. I never once left my shelter until it
cleared.
Poor Pat Whelan! He had lost his horses in the storm, and being sure
that I would freeze to death if he could not get back to me, he had
spent every hour of daylight looking for them. What he must have
suffered in that awful gale, while I was safe and comfortable!
My readers would grow weary if I told the whole story of that winter’s
search. There were so few results that I became thoroughly disheartened
and anxious to give up the fight and go home, where my wife and dear
baby were waiting for me. There was further cause for discouragement in
the fact that Pat had only agreed to stay with me until spring plowing
began, and the time for that was rapidly approaching. But I would not
give up. So we worked on down the stream toward the Fort Sill cattle
trail, traveling on an average twenty miles a day on foot, with the
record “Nothing” in my notebook night after night.
But on the eleventh of February, after forty days of unceasing effort, I
discovered below the forks of the Big Wichita a somewhat different
horizon from that of the beds over which I had been working so
persistently without success. Some of the beds in this region are
composed of red clay, with small irregular concretions that are piled in
heaps at the base of the hills and roll under one’s feet, rendering
travel difficult In other strata are deposits of small nodules, held
together by silica. These nodules are of various colors, and where held
securely and ground down, make beautiful mosaics. Then there are beds of
greenish sandstone, laid down in thin layers; and in these beds, for the
first time since I came to Texas, I found the remains of a Permian
vertebrate. My notes say: “Although it is not wise to shout before I am
out of the woods, yet I feel very much encouraged, and I earnestly hope
for the success I have worked for. I have evidently worked too high in
the red beds to find fossils.”
On the second day in these beds, I found fragments of the great
salamander _Eryops_, and on the twenty-second of February, I found the
first specimen that I had ever seen of the long-spined reptile,
_Dimetredon_. Of this last I got seventy-five pounds of bones and
matrix, preserved in iron ore concretions. The teeth are long, recurved,
and serrated. I knew little then about these most ancient of all the
vertebrates that it has been my fortune to collect, but I shall have
more to say about them later. The authorities now place the time when
these animals lived twelve million years away. Indeed, “God is not slack
as some men count slackness, one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day.”
The only way in which we can realize the lapse of millions of years is
by a study of the work which nature has accomplished in them, depositing
vast strata, lifting them up into mountain ranges, and carving out in
them flood-plains and mighty canyons. More interesting still is a study
of the countless forms of life which, in ever-varying groups, have each
in turn dominated sea and earth and air. First, as here in Texas, the
batrachians reigned supreme, a race of creatures which were supplied
with both gills and lungs, so that they could live both on land and in
water. Then came the reptiles, and later still dawned the Age of
Mammals, with man as the crowning work of the Creator’s hands.
I was now at last in the fossiliferous beds and secured some fine
material. Unfortunately about this time Pat gave notice that he would
soon be obliged to leave me. I should then have no team, and to work in
these fossil beds without a means of transportation would be as useless
as to attempt to dig up a forest with a hoe. I had, however, sent north
for an assistant, a Mr. Wright, and after hunting for me a day and a
half in the brakes of the Big Wichita, he finally arrived in camp.
On the sixth of March a violent norther struck us. We were better off
for protection than we had been, however, as my tent had at last arrived
from Kansas; and although only an A-tent, it kept out the storms of
sleet and snow that fell for three days. During all that time the cattle
remained without food in the dense woods. Such times as this, when we
were confined to the close quarters of our tent and could accomplish
nothing but keeping ourselves warm, are in my opinion the most
uncomfortable which the fossil hunter is called upon to endure.
On the ninth of March, the sun rose bright and clear upon a scene of
surprising beauty. Every tree, bush, and blade of grass on the red beds
was covered with a milky white ice, whose silvery luster was set with
innumerable sparkling gems. It was glorious at sunrise, but as the
morning advanced, the snow and ice began to melt, leaving patches of red
and white over the Bad Lands, and by noon had entirely disappeared. The
hills rapidly dried, as the thick red water sought the drainage canals,
and we were soon at work once more.
As a precaution against the very difficulty which I had encountered,—I
mean the impossibility of keeping a man and team with me,—I had obtained
from the Secretary of War, through the efforts of Professor Alexander
Agassiz, a letter of introduction to the commanders of western posts,
requesting them to assist me by every means in their power not
inconsistent with the public service. With this letter from the
Honorable Robert T. Lincoln, a son of our martyred President, I started
out on the twelfth of March for Fort Sill, on a pony hired from a livery
stable. I was assured that it was only sixty miles to the Fort, and that
the pony could easily take me there in a day, but I soon found that he
was just off grass, and weak and thin. I also discovered, after night
had overtaken me, that I had been put on the wrong cattle trail. I
reached a house in the evening, that of a school-teacher, who, because
of his having had some education and possessing the ability to talk
intelligently, was known in that region as “Windy” Turner, in
distinction from “Bull” Turner, a cowman. I found him to be a gentleman.
The next morning he gave me directions as to how to reach the old trail
that led to the Fort. I was to go to Wagoner’s cattle camp, where the
trail crossed Beaver Creek, and spend the night there. I traveled nearly
all day, and reached the ranch building, the only house I had seen since
I left the school-teacher’s, only to find the camp deserted. Not a man
nor a cow was in sight. As I had had no lunch, I was very hungry, and
this being my first visit to this region, I did not know where to turn
for food and shelter. At last, however, I saw a horseman coming toward
me from the northeast, and rode to meet him. He was a cowboy. I inquired
where Wagoner had gone, and learned that he had left a few days before
for the Indian Territory. I was told, moreover, that the nearest place
at which I could get a meal was back on Coffee Creek, which I had left
in the morning. When I complained of being cold and hungry and of not
liking to sleep in my saddle blanket on the ground without supper, the
cowboy replied that he had not had a morsel to eat for three days and
that he had slept for three nights in his saddle blanket. After that I
said no more.
I was unwilling to return all the way back to the hospitable roof that
had sheltered me the night before, and continued my journey, with no
expectation of coming upon a human habitation until I reached Red River
the next night. It is hard to express my delight, therefore, when, upon
reaching the divide between Beaver Creek and Red River, I saw a lot of
tents, some distance to the right of the trail. I hurried to the
encampment, and found that it belonged to the locating engineer of the
Denver and Fort Worth Railroad. When I told the young man from whom I
had obtained this information that I wanted to see the engineer, he
grinned (I was not a very pleasant-looking individual, covered as I was
with the dust of travel), but he opened the door of the tent and said,
“Here’s a man who wants to see you.”
As the occupant of the tent came forward, I presented to him my letter
of introduction from the Secretary of War; and I saw the grin disappear
from the face of my guide as the engineer shook hands with me cordially,
and remarking, “That is a good enough letter of introduction for me,”
placed himself at my service. When I told him that my pony and I were
hungry, he instructed the man who had expected to see me refused the
courtesies of the camp to get up a good supper for me and to care for my
pony. Then, inviting me to make myself at home, he entertained me
royally, and after I had made a hearty meal, opened a bale of new woolen
blankets, and provided me with a most comfortable bed in his own tent. I
hope if Major J. F. Menette sees this story, he will accept at this late
day my thanks for his kindly treatment.
The next night I reached the crossing on Red River, where I found a
house and stayed all night. The next day, about nightfall I crossed Cach
Creek, and saw at my right, in a bend of the creek, an elevated “bench”
on which a tepee was pitched. There were two Indians standing about, one
a large, fleshy, good-natured man, the other thin, with large, prominent
cheek bones, a typical Comanche. A large flock of children ran out to
greet me. I must confess that I felt a little uneasy at being so
entirely alone and at the mercy of these Indians, but I made the best of
it, and as several turkeys were lying on the ground, I told the
good-natured man that I wanted his squaw to cook me one for supper. This
she proceeded to do, removing the breast and putting it on a wooden spit
which she stuck in the ground before a large bed of coals and constantly
turned until the meat was done. This, with a cup of coffee which she
made me and the bread crumbs from my lunch, gave me quite a meal. I was
too hungry to be fastidious.
The Indians were roasting camus, the bulb of the wild hyacinth, which
grew plentifully in the creek bottom. They had dug a pit five feet deep
and three in diameter and kindled a fire at the bottom, using at least a
cord of wood to heat thoroughly the surrounding ground. The ashes were
then scraped out, and the walls plastered with a mortar of mud, over
which green grass was thickly strewn to prevent the bulbs from burning.
The bulbs were then put in and covered with grass and mud, and a fire
built on top of them. The next morning they were done, and were as much
relished by these Indian children as popcorn or peanuts by the whites. I
tasted some. They had a sweetish taste, a little like sweet potatoes,
but they were so full of sand that my teeth were not strong enough to
grind them up.
I put off going to bed until late, as I dreaded sleeping in the high
grass where I had left my saddle. But at last the children, who had been
amusing me, went off to bed, and I decided to go too. I spread half my
saddle blanket under me, and with my saddle for a pillow was just dozing
off when I heard a rustle in the dead grass, and the thin Indian, whom I
disliked, stuck his head almost into my face. He had something in his
hands which he wanted to swap with me for some of my property, and the
more I argued, the more determined he was to trade. He wanted my pony,
my Winchester, everything I had, and I was afraid that he would take
them whether or no. At last, however, he left, crawling through the
grass as he had come; but I was just dropping off to sleep, when I heard
the snake-like rustle again. I was getting mad by that time, and when
the Indian parted the tall grass and peered through the opening, he
faced the muzzle of my gun, while I told him with much vehemence that if
he did not go about his business and let me get to sleep, I would bore a
hole through him. This had the desired effect, and but for the cold,
which wakened me often, I slept in peace the rest of the night.
I was wakened in the morning by a shot, and a wild turkey fell from a
tree near where I had been sleeping. They were so tame and abundant that
they roosted in camp. The jolly Indian was anxious to earn another
quarter, and as I had ordered turkey for supper, he had concluded that I
wanted one for breakfast. I was not quite so hungry this morning, and
detected the Indian smell which is left on everything they touch; but I
made a brave attempt not to show my disgust to my host.
After breakfast, as I started out for the trail, a boy of fourteen
walked down with me and stood talking, with his hands tangled in my
pony’s mane. I had given him some tobacco, and he was smoking a
cigarette which he had made with a dry leaf. At our feet the path
divided and encircled a little mound of earth covered with buffalo
grass. When the boy had finished his smoke, he threw the still burning
stump into this dead grass, which was damp with dew and sent up a dense
column of smoke. This was all done so naturally that I thought nothing
of it until I got up on the level prairie, where I could see for miles
ahead. As far as the eye could reach, column after column of smoke was
rising through the still morning air. It was thirty miles from the
crossing at Cach Creek to Fort Sill, yet when I presented my letter to
Major Guy Henry in the office at nine o’clock the next morning, the
first question he asked was “Did you leave the crossing at Cach Creek
about sunrise yesterday morning?” And when I answered that I had, he
said that probably about ten or fifteen minutes after I left the creek,
the Comanche chief had received notice by smoke signal that one man was
coming over the trail toward the Fort.
In coming to Fort Sill, I had inadvertently come from one department
into another, and the major had no power to send men out of his
department without orders from General Sheridan, the commanding general
of the Army. So I had to wait at Fort Sill until the matter could be
arranged.
The southern cowboys, who hated the army blue and the darky soldiers who
were stationed at the Fort, were doing all that they could to irritate
the officers. While the latter were at dinner and the soldiers off duty,
a squad of cowboys would ride into the post across the well-kept grass
on the parade grounds up to the flagstaff, and fire at the Stars and
Stripes. Another of their tricks was to shoot off the glass insulators
from the government telegraph lines which connect the Fort with the
headquarters at Leavenworth and with the Department of the Gulf. They
had just accomplished this piece of mischief when I arrived at the Fort,
and before the major could communicate with General Pope, Commander of
the Department of the Missouri, in which Fort Sill was situated, he had
to send out the signal sergeant to repair the line.
At last, however, all was arranged, and by general order, Corporal
Bromfield, three privates, a six-mule team, and a wagon with a white
teamster, and fifty days’ rations, were detailed for my use. I started
out with this escort, elated by the knowledge that I now had men and
means of transportation upon which I could depend.
It is indeed a lovely drive from Fort Sill to Red River. We were rarely
out of sight of the impressive Wichita Mountains, which rise from a sea
of green plains like an islet in a lake. We reached the river on the
second day, and had a mile of sand to pull through. At one time I
thought that we would go down in the treacherous quicksands, but our
magnificent team of dark-colored mules and the skill of the teamster
carried us safely over. I have since seen, in the sands of this same
river, holes ten feet deep which had been dug to rescue wagons loaded
with valuable goods, that had sunk down to bedrock during high water.
When we reached the beds of the Big Wichita, we worked both Indian and
Coffee creeks, a few miles apart. Here at last, after so much toil and
so many hardships, I found myself in the very center of the
fossil-bearing strata, and secured a number of fine specimens, among
them the great salamander _Eryops_, the wonderful fin-backed lizard
_Naosaurus_, that peculiar batrachian _Diplocaulus_, and other forms.
On arriving at the fossil beds, I showed Corporal Bromfield where I
wanted him to pitch my wall tent, and went into the field with Mr.
Wright, in search of fossils. When I returned at night, I found that the
corporal had pitched my tent on a level and his own A-tent as close to
it as he possibly could. “This will never do,” I said to myself.
“Discipline will go to the dogs, if I allow such close companionship.”
So I ordered him to take down his tent and pitch it a hundred yards
away, and to follow this rule in future. The soldiers were very
indignant, but they obeyed orders. As a general rule I found that I
could handle them, although there were a few breaches of discipline.
I was so unfortunate on this expedition as to have my tent burned, with
nearly all my personal property. When the men got to the flaming tent,
the first thing they did was to cut the guy-ropes and let it blow over.
They then, at my request, brought water and threw it on the burning
sacks that held the fossils. This saved the fossils, but to do so we had
to let everything else go.
On the twenty-fifth of April, we started with our load for Decatur, the
nearest railroad point. We took the Henrietta road, and camped on the
Little Wichita, where, in the sandy shales of the Upper Carboniferous or
Permian, we found a locality rich in the fossil flora of that region. We
secured a number of large fern fronds, etc.
Wild turkey were, as usual, abundant. Lee Irving, one of the escort,
killed a hen and gobbler, and gave us a change from our customary diet
of bacon. On the fourth of May, after a long journey, we plowed through
the valley named, and well named, the Big Sandy, and passing through
groves of splendid live oaks, pecans, water elms, and locusts, reached
Decatur, the terminus of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. Here I
delivered to the agent my precious load of fossils, which had cost me so
much expense, labor, and anxiety, and set out on the return trip to Fort
Sill; where, on the twelfth of May, after a journey without incident, I
turned over my command to Major Henry. The next time I heard of this
splendid officer, he was a brigadier general in command of Porto Rico.