Expeditions in the Texas Permian 237 



Crooked Creek and in the other creek valleys, north- 

 west of the productive beds. 



Here were thousands of acres of denuded bluffs of 

 red clay, cut into fantastic shapes, often resembling 

 old fashioned straw bee-hives or crumbling towers 

 and battlements. As far as the eye could reach, 

 they spread out along the divide in ever-varying 

 shapes. The beds disintegrated easily into red mud. 

 There were no concretions, although the rock was 

 full of concentric rings, from the sixteenth of an 

 inch to an inch in diameter, consisting of a round 

 white spot with a red rim. The narrow dikes which 

 cross the thick deposits of clay are filled with fibrous 

 gypsum. Underneath the clay lie strata of red and 

 white sandstone and compact concretionary rock, all 

 barren. 



But the discouragement which attended my un- 

 successful search was only one of the trials with 

 which I had to contend that winter. In the first 

 place, the weather was against me. It snowed or 

 rained continually, so that the ground was never 

 dry, and I took up ten or fifteen pounds of red mud 

 on each foot as I walked. I came down with a 

 severe attack of grippe, too; and to make matters 

 worse, my teamster, who was also my cook, took a 

 particular dislike to my stove, which had been manu- 

 factured under my own supervision and had always 

 proved satisfactory with other men, and insisted 



