my load, I lowered my head and made a charge at the nearest steer, 

 which, to my great reUef, gave way and scattered the ring. It soon re- 

 formed and began to close in again, but, in the interval, I had made 

 considerable progress toward my horse, and, by repeating the ma- 

 noeuvre five or six times, was able to reach him intact. The moment I 

 was in the saddle, the cattle fled Hke chaff before the wind; they knew 

 very well what a mounted man was and did not desire his nearer 

 acquaintance. It was a very fortunate circumstance for me that the 

 bunch was small; for, with a herd, the inner ring could not have given 

 way. Under such circumstances, death would have been sure. 



Getting back to Baker City was a toilsome business, for the long 

 drought had made the roads deep in dust. I had gone ahead to straighten 

 out some complication concerning our railroad transportation. A couple 

 of days later, I wrote: "Yesterday afternoon, the outfit arrived and 

 rode into town in a compact column of twos, which created great excite- 

 ment and commotion. It was the dirtiest-looking set I ever laid eyes 

 upon. The collection has reached the very respectable weight of a ton 

 and a half, which will keep Mr. Hill's fingers busy for a long time to 

 come and fills me with serene satisfaction." Had I known what was 

 to happen to that collection, my satisfaction would not have been 

 serene. 



We went by rail to Portland, Ore., and there the party broke up. I 

 went down to CaHfornia and paid my first visit to San Francisco and 

 Monterey, a visit that had to be tantalisingly short. Then followed a 

 swift dash across the continent, very different from the leisurely jaunts 

 of ten years before. 



EXPEDITION OF 189O 



A trip to South Dakota occupied a few weeks of the August and 

 September of 1890 and, though very short in time, it was memorable 

 in several respects other than palaeontological, though from that point 

 of view also it had a fair measure of success. As our outfitting and 

 starting point, we selected Fort Robinson, Neb., which we had so toil- 

 somely reached, on the '82 trip, by road from Cheyenne, whereas in '90 

 we went there directly by sleeping car, the extension of the Chicago 

 and Northwestern system running through the post. By some accident, 

 only a few of the letters written from the field that summer have been 

 preserved and they have little to say concerning the work. 



I travelled directly from Chicago to Chadron, Neb., where the sleep- 

 ing car was put on a siding and taken on to Fort Robinson in the morn- 



C 177 3 



