“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.)