COLLECTING AT KILLIK AIKE. 59 



After a couple of hours' travel across the broad and level surface of the 

 pampa we came to the head of a long draw leading down to the canon, 

 at the mouth of which is the Killik Aike settlement. Hardly had we 

 started to descend this draw, when we came suddenly upon a drove of 

 ostrich, Rhea darwinii, numbering some fifteen or twenty. They were 

 the first we had seen except at a distance, and it must be confessed that 

 our inspection of these at close range was not very satisfactory, for im- 

 mediately they had seen us they were off like a shot at an incredible 

 speed, only equalled by that of the fleetest horse or hound. While the 

 rhea is a flightless bird, its locomotion is nevertheless materially aided by 

 the wings, which, when running, are kept moving in such manner as to 

 aid in propelling the animal forward, or are held stationary in a partially 

 expanded position, so as to- act as sails when running before the wind. 

 We arrived at Killik Aike in good season, and, selecting a suitable camp- 

 ing place near a spring a few hundred yards above the settlement, we 

 pitched our tent, ditched it well, and banked it up around the bottom, 

 hauled in a supply of wood, and prepared to make ourselves as comfort- 

 able as the circumstances would permit during the time necessary to com- 

 plete our work at this locality. 



So abundant were fossils in the exposures along the bluffs of the river 

 at Killik Aike that we were kept busy, working early and late and seven 

 days to the week, for nearly a month. First we worked the bluffs which 

 I had prospected on my first visit and which lay up stream from the 

 mouth of the canon. Then, when the supply of fossils here became 

 practically exhausted, we turned our attention to the cliffs below the 

 canon, which were discovered to be equally rich in fossil remains. 



While the season of the year was that at which in this latitude the days 

 are shortest and the nights longest, nevertheless, on account of the linger- 

 ing twilight, we were able to accomplish a good day's work. We break- 

 fasted each morning long before sunrise, and when that messenger of day 

 appeared through the gray morning mists, rising like a brilliant red disc 

 out of the waters of the Atlantic on our eastern horizon, we were already 

 miles away and hard at work completing the excavation of some skull or 

 skeleton commenced the preceding day, or perchance greatly elated over 

 some new and important discovery. The very wealth of the material 

 about us was an incentive to greater efforts. We were continually 

 encountering and becoming familiar with an animal life pertaining to an 



