34 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



them, I left Manhattan and drove out to Buffalo 

 Park, where one of my brothers was the agent. 

 The only house, beside the small station building, 

 was that occupied by the section men. Great piles 

 of buffalo bones along the railroad at every station 

 testified to the countless numbers of the animals 

 slain by the white man in his craze for pleasure and 

 money. A buffalo hide was worth at that time about 

 a dollar and a quarter. 



Here at Buffalo I had my headquarters for many 

 years. A great windmill and a well of pure water, 

 a hundred and twenty feet deep, made it a Mecca 

 for us fossil hunters after two weeks of strong 

 alkali water. At this well Professor Mudge's party 

 and my own used to meet in peace after our fierce 

 rivalry in the field as collectors for our respective 

 paleontologists, Marsh and Cope. 



What vivid memories I have of that first expe- 

 dition ! memories of countless hardships and splen- 

 did results. I explored all the exposures of chalk 

 from the mouth of Hackberry Creek, in the eastern 

 part of Gove County, to Fort Wallace, on the south 

 fork of the Smoky Hill, a distance of a hundred 

 miles, as well as the region along the north and 

 south forks of the Soloman River. 



When we left Buffalo Station, we left civilization 

 behind us. We made our own wagon trails, two 

 of which especially were afterwards used by the 



