OBSERVATIONS ON THE EXPEDITION 



The hundreds of square miles of these beds containing 

 thousands of tons of the bones of these huge vertebrates, some of 

 which are exposed by erosion each year, impresses one with 

 the vastness of the burying ground over which we were traveling 

 and the history of its formation and inhabitants while it was a 

 low marshy plain. These bones are imbedded in a pale 

 bluish-green stratum of clay varying in thickness from twenty 

 to fifty feet. This stratum is easily found and recognized, 

 being immediately above the shale overlying the Triassic red 

 sandstones, under which is a layer where the belemnites are 

 found very abundantly. Above the dinosaur stratum is a thick 

 layer of sandstone, and boulders from this often tumble down 

 dragging the bones among the talus, often making it difficult to 

 determine the exact point from which the bones came. 



From our camp at Freezeout Mountains by three marches 

 we arrived at the Grand Canon of the Platte. Here the Platte 

 River has cut a channel with almost vertical sides a thousand 

 feet deep, through the strata for a distance of nine miles. Owing 

 to the arduous task of entering the canon, at many places this 

 being impossible, the study of the exposed strata at close range, 

 becomes somewhat difficult. The writer, in company with 

 Lieutenant Murphy of Wyoming University, entered the caiion 

 and drank from the rushing river. None of our company were 

 daring enough to attempt to go through the canon, although we 

 were told that only one man had ever succeeded who attempted 

 it. On approaching the canon it was seen that we were on a 

 rolling plain, indented here and there with small streams that 

 had made rather deep channels for this country. However, 

 I am sure it would never occur to a stranger that only two or three 

 hundred yards in front of him was a chasm a thousand feet deep. 

 Almost instantly you perceive there is a great caiion in front 



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