180 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



amazing rapidity that before he could turn around 

 he would be engulfed in fathoms of water. We 

 always climbed up to some high point the minute 

 we heard the rain strike the rocks above us, and 

 waited until the storm was over and the water had 

 run out. A ditch containing twenty feet, some- 

 times, of water would dry up as soon as it stopped 

 raining, so steep was the slope of its bed. 



I was continually impressed in this region by the 

 power of running water. Not only is this mani- 

 fested in the mighty canyons which have been 

 carved out during the course of ages from the solid 

 rock, but I stood transfixed with astonishment once, 

 at the mouth of the little creek in front of Uncle 

 Johnnie's cabin, on finding it dammed by a mass of 

 basaltic rock, weighing at least twenty tons, which 

 had been brought from its native hills, three miles 

 away, by a flood of water, and left stranded here. 

 All the side canyons that empty into the John Day 

 River have dumped their loads of boulders there, in 

 some places damming the stream or creating a series 

 of rapids. 



I soon found that all the ground in the fossil beds 

 which was easy to get at had been gone over. Here 

 and there we would run across a pile of broken 

 bones and a hole from which a skull had been taken. 

 When I asked Bill what he had meant by leaving 

 the bones of the skeleton behind, he answered, " We 



