1 82 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



misstep on those cliffs would mean death or worse 

 than death on the pitiless rocks below ; but every day 

 we gained confidence and grew more skilful in the 

 use of our picks. 



Far above the pick-marks of the fossil hunters 

 who had preceded us, far above the signs of the 

 mountain sheep that inhabited these wilds, we made 

 our way, cutting niches for our feet as high above 

 us as we could reach, and drawing ourselves up with 

 bodies pressed to the rock. At each niche we rested, 

 and scanned the face of the cliff for the point of a 

 tooth or the end of a bone, or for one of those con- 

 cretions, among the thousands that everywhere 

 topped the pinnacles or projected from the rocky 

 slopes, whose skull-shaped form revealed the treas- 

 ure that was hidden away within. When a fossil 

 was found we first cut out of the face of the cliff a 

 place large enough to stand upon, and then carved 

 out the specimen. 



I could tell of a hundred narrow escapes from 

 death. One day I was standing on a couple of ob- 

 long concretions, about a foot in length, with a 

 chasm, fifty feet deep and three or four feet wide, 

 immediately in front of me. After I had searched 

 carefully the surface of all the rocks in sight, I 

 started to jump over to a narrow ledge on the other 

 side of the gorge. Suddenly both concretions flew 

 from under my feet, and I was plunging head down- 



