THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



what he will find or whether he will 

 find anything of importance. When he 

 does find something it will probably not 

 be the thing he is looking for. Many 

 times as I have threaded the labyrinths 

 of hot ravines I have beguiled the way 

 and kept up my hope by seeing, in my 

 mind, a huge reptile, from head to tail, 

 stretched like a picture along some cliff; 

 or, as 1 have trodden the arid hills I 

 have seen, on a slab of sandstone, a 

 whole skeleton of one of those little Cre- 

 taceous mammals which we know onlv 



camp outfit, and dig out, box and ship 

 the fossils. 



1 tried to buy a saddle horse in Hele- 

 na : but, in the midst of the land of ca- 

 yuses, I found only one or two for sale; 

 but the prices did not suit me, and they 

 were too old to be valuable property, 

 yet too recent to pass as relics of a for- 

 mer age. I decided to try to "pick up" 

 a horse at one of the ranches, so I started 

 for the place where I wished to begin 

 my search. With trunk, grip and cam- 

 era. 1 boarded a train and went back to 



LOOKING ACROSS THE MISSOURI VALLEY FROM THE BAD LANDS. 



Belt Mountains in the Distance. 

 "The ' breaks' alone; the Misssouri Valley." 



b) a jaw bone with a few teeth. What 

 wouldn't we give to know the skeleton 

 of one Cretaceous or Jurassic Mammal? 

 1 never have found these things of which 

 1 have dreamed, yet 1 have found the re- 

 mains of scores of animals which T never 

 expected to find, and with what delight 

 1 have picked up every fragment of the 

 teeth and bones of some animal that no 

 man bad ever seen before. 



My previous experiences in Montana 

 had taught me that the places where the 

 bones of extinct animals could be found 

 were few and were usually separated bv 

 long distances, so 1 concluded that 1 

 would first go over the ground on horse- 

 Lack, and then, if 1 found any good lo- 

 calities, go with men tern, wp" •-. "H 



Winston, a little railroad station on a 

 great rocky fiat, to examine some 

 bad-lands east of there along the Mis- 

 souri River. 1 had, two or three times 

 before, while passing in a wagon or 

 train, caught glimpses of these chalky- 

 looking deposits, but had never had the 

 Opportunity of examining them. 



Leaving my baggage at the hotel in 

 Winston, I started out on foot with sack 

 and prospector's pick. After a walk of 

 two or three miles I came to the oreaks" 

 along the Missouri Valley, where, in 

 places, the running waters have carved 

 the soft rocks into fantastic forms. 



Mere, where erosion had so thorough- 

 ly dissected the old deposits, I thought 

 T would surelv find some bones of an- 



