132 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
tend the dredging on board; later in the day he will 
draw the seine once more on the beach, and this after- 
noon we hope to be on our way again. Had we time 
to stay here I think we might get some specimens of 
the larger land animals, for yesterday the gentlemen 
found tracks of guanacos, wolves, foxes and ostriches, 
not more than a mile or two from the beach, and as we 
came up the Gulf we saw the guanacos from the 
deck. Pourtalés was near being caught “‘in a tight 
place,” as he said himself, yesterday. When they 
landed near that steep cliff where the fossils were so 
thick, you know, he went alone to the top of the cliff 
which was very abrupt and high, —I believe two or 
three hundred feet. While on the summit he heard 
the signal guns for the party to go off to the ship, 
as the Captain wished to leave the anchorage at a 
favorable moment for the tide. Pourtalés wanted to 
reach the boat as quickly as possible and found a 
gully in which he thought he could descend by a short 
cut to the beach. It consisted of long steps formed by 
the successive strata. Down these he found little 
difficulty in jumping or letting himself down; but 
after making half the descent he came to a place 
where the step was a vertical wall, altogether too 
high for a jump and no crevices for hands or feet. 
Impossible to return as he came, for though he could 
jump or let himself down, he could neither jump nor 
drag himself wp, and the face of the cliff was too 
steep for climbing. Happily he had with him a hatchet 
for taking off geological specimens, and with that 
he cut steps in the wall up the whole height of the 
