208 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



the track again, for although everyone in town 

 knew Professor Cummins, no one could tell where 

 he had found his fossils. " Over in the brakes," was 

 all the information anyone could give. Finally a 

 man named Turner asked me to come over to his 

 cattle range on the middle fork of the Wichita, as 

 the country was cut up into canyons and ridges and 

 denuded, so that I should be likely to find fossils. 

 He knew of some mastodon bones in the vicinity, 

 he said. So I went with him. 



At one place the road led us across the narrows, 

 where there is scarcely room for a wagon road be- 

 tween the brakes of the Brazos and the Big Wichita. 

 Looking south, shallow ravines led to the valley of 

 the Brazos, while to the north were deep gulches and 

 mounds capped with white ledges of gypsum with 

 red beds of clay below. I had reached at last the 

 red beds of Texas. 



An interesting phenomenon is to be observed 

 here the bed of the Big Wichita is one hundred 

 and seventy-five feet lower than that of the Brazos. 

 North of the Brazos, along a line that extends 

 through Baylor County, the country has been lifted 

 up and disturbed by pressure from below, while 

 south of that line, the only disturbance in the strata 

 has been due to erosion. Everywhere in the red 

 beds of the Wichita valley are signs of an eleva- 

 tion of the earth's crust, and for miles down the 



