76 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



what guanaco they could shoot; but if a man had a little 

 he loaned his neighbor, they traded work and spent little. 

 Now almost every family has 10,000 to 20,000 pesos worth 

 of property in sheep, buildings and land. We found them 

 a delightfully hospitable people, very like our own western 

 frontiersman. 



We finally came to the house of Booysen, the man who 

 had found a bone, but he was out shearing sheep. I went 

 to his pens and found him, asking in English where he 

 found the bone. He did not understand English. Then 

 I tried my Spanish. That was the same. Last I tried 

 German, thinking it similar to Dutch. No use. Finally I 

 told him we were from New York, and that was the key, 

 for then he spoke English all right and could understand 

 German. After a bit he pointed out the kopje some three 

 miles off where he had found the bone, "but it was no good, 

 for it all fell to pieces." However, Billy and I rode out to 

 look over the lay of the land. After we got upon the hill 

 it did not take half an hour to be sure that the point for 

 which we had been seeking for over two months was before 

 us. In that time I grew at least fifteen years younger. 



The hill was a mesa-like table, not over half a mile long, 

 and constricted nearly to breaking in two places. The 

 material was sands of varying grades of fineness, laid down 

 in beds, some slanting this way, some the other, cross- 

 bedded, which is indication of a river deposit, the bedding 

 indicating the shifting bars, etc. In the sands were fine 

 particles of worn bones, and occasionally a whole bone, 

 a jaw, or, as we found later, a skull. Some of the beds 

 were predominantly coarse sand, others sandy clay, and 

 here and there thin bands of volcanic ashes. The contact 

 at the bottom of the bed was of the most irregular sort. 



We stood where a great river had flowed two million 

 years ago, or thereabouts. In and about it the animals 

 drank and wandered. Some died or were killed here, as 

 happens today. Their bones lay on the bank or in the 



