ing. My first letter was written on August i from Fort Robinson and 

 says, in part: "This morning I awoke at Chadron, a town of several 

 thousand people, with a number of solid brick buildings in sight from 

 the station. In '82 I camped there and the only building in the place was 

 a log ranch. The building of a railroad works marvellous changes in 

 this region. I reached Fort Robinson this morning. I called on Colonel 

 Tilford, who was most kind and insisted that I should stay at his 

 house. The rest of the crowd will be in tomorrow morning and I must 

 have some sort of a camp ready for them. Robinson has been greatly 

 changed and enlarged since I was here eight years ago and I hardly 

 know the place." Colonel Tilford gave me a small detachment of men 

 from the 9th Cavalry and one of the post-surgeons, Dr. J. R. Kean, 

 accompanied us for a time. "As he is one of the nicest men imaginable, 

 we are all delighted to have him with us." 



The party again contained my colleague, Professor W. F. Magie, 

 whose love of Western camp life was inexhaustible. I received a visit 

 from J. B. Hatcher, the famous collector, who was, at that time still 

 in Marsh's employ, but came to Princeton three years later. Hatcher 

 guided us to some good fossil locations near Robinson and, after giving 

 me some very useful hints about the best way of getting fossil bones 

 out of the rock, went away to his own proper work. From that camp, 

 we marched up to and across the Cheyenne River, where we made our 

 permanent camp. So long as Dr. Kean was with us, we found camp 

 life much more luxurious than ever before. The students all slept to- 

 gether in a big Sibley tent, Kean, Magie and I in a wall tent, which 

 was kept in order by one of the darkey troopers who accompanied us. 

 I had had a folding camp mattress of felt made in New York and Magie 

 and I found that a great improvement over sleeping on the ground. 



At the town of Oelrichs we found two troops of the 8th Cavalry in 

 camp. Captain Wells, in command of the squadron, made us guests 

 at his mess and we found the novelties of ice and claret very refreshing. 

 As I wrote in a letter of August 12: "The town of Oehlrichs is half- 

 deserted, it being an instance of what one so often sees in the West, 

 misapplied money and labour. All this region is wonderfully changed 

 since I saw it last and is comparatively thickly settled now, but it is not 

 fit for farms, as there is very little rain, and the people are wretchedly 

 poor. Dr. Kean tells a story of a man on Hat Creek, who was asked 

 how he happened to settle in such a country. He replied : 'Well, I came 

 out from Chicago, with a return ticket, to visit my wife's brother and 

 he offered me his farm for my return ticket. I took him up and ever 



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