CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 



THE PATAGONIAN REPORTS 



IT was obviously necessary for me to go abroad and make arrange- 

 ments with some European publislier and also to secure some sort 

 of a contract for the many lithographic plates which would be needed. 

 Most of these could only be made in Germany, within my limit of 

 cost. As part of my expenses would have to be met from the publication 

 fund, an even more rigorous economy than usual would be demanded. 

 Through a friend, I got passage on a tramp-steamer without a passenger 

 license, paying the sum of $20 for my board. That voyage, with its 

 many discomforts, was far more interesting than the usual crossing on 

 a hner. A most disagreeable episode was running ashore on the French 

 coast, which gave all hands a good fright, but we finally got off and 

 limped into Havre, leaking. The first night ashore I spent at Rouen, 

 going on to Paris the next morning, and I was greatly struck by the 

 change in the ways of French railway travellers; in both journeys every 

 one sat in dead silence and I did not hear a single word spoken. I was 

 told that this was due to the Dreyfus case, which had so split France 

 into warring camps that people were afraid to talk to strangers. 



I went to Paris in order to attend the International Geological Con- 

 gress, which was held in connection with the Exposition Universelle of 

 1900, and found Osborn and his wife at the hotel, and von Zittel came 

 in to luncheon. I had a talk with him on the subject of a European pub- 

 lisher for the Patagonian Reports and he advised me to go to Stuttgart 

 and interview E. Nagele, publisher of Palaeontographica. In the evening 

 I went to the reception given to the Congress by the Societe Geologique 

 de France and there I met the eminent French geologist, de Lapparent, 

 whom I never had another opportunity to see. He was a very polished, 

 agreeable man and he made one remark that was very illuminating 

 with regard to conditions in France. It was in reply to my question as 

 to why he, in his admirable text-book, put the Pikermi formation, of 

 Greece, into the Miocene, when its Pliocene age was so much more 



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