CHAPTER SIX 



FIRST WESTERN EXPEDITION 



BEFORE I give an account of our travels and adventures in the 

 Far West, I ought to say something of the remarkable state in 

 which vertebrate palaeontology then was in this country. It will be seen 

 later that this is not a mere digression, but is entirely germane and neces- 

 sary to the understanding of my story. 



At that time and for some years later, the science was almost exclu- 

 sively in the hands of three uncommonly able and distinguished men. 

 Dr. Joseph Leidy and Professor E. D. Cope, of Philadelphia, and Pro- 

 fessor O. C. Marsh, of Yale. Dr. Leidy, one of the most remarkable of 

 American men of science in many departments of research, was first in 

 the field and began to publish descriptions of fossils from the Far West 

 in the 'forties of the last century. His reputation became so great, that 

 almost all discoveries of vertebrate fossils in the United States were 

 reported and usually the specimens were sent for description to him. Dr. 

 F. V. Hayden, head of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of 

 the Territories, systematically forwarded to Leidy the vertebrate fossils 

 gathered by his parties. 



Hayden had the great advantage of being regarded by the Indians as 

 a madman and therefore sacred, and this enabled him to visit many 

 places which were inaccessible to other white men. Though Leidy had 

 many fine things at his disposal, his material was, for the most part, very 

 fragmentary, consisting of bones that had been weathered out of the 

 enclosing rock and lay in a more or less shattered state on the ground. 

 The art of collecting had not then reached the high degree of skill and 

 efficiency to which it afterward attained. No doubt, it was largely for 

 this reason that Leidy's palaeontological work was so largely descriptive 

 and objective and devoid of theoretical deductions. 



Professor E. D. Cope, of the well known Philadelphia family of that 

 name, was, at the time of which I am writing, a man of independent 

 wealth and his only official position was a nominal connection with the 



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