DIVIDE PARTY 109 



caused one landslide after another, which had piled up on 

 each other below the great cHff in the wildest confusion. 

 Ameghino's camp site was found, and the exposures looked 

 so good, we determined to give the locality a good try 

 out anyway. 



Then we circled back toward the house, bringing up at 

 a Spanish estancia some three miles from La Madrugada, 

 the foreman of which had seen some gigantic bones and 

 ofTered to show us the place. First, we had lunch; and 

 then all four set out at a pace set by his fresh horse. After 

 six or seven miles we came to a large salina, the margin 

 of which was made of that curious mud which dries on the 

 top remaining like jelly below, and which mires so many 

 horses and sheep. Our leader had tested out a path over 

 this and was soon pointing triumphantly at two large con- 

 cretions which were roughly the shape of vertebrae, and 

 by imagination had been converted into a buried whale. 

 He was much chagrined when we told him as tactfully 

 as we could that they were not and never had been bone. 

 But he said he knew where there was one bone he was 

 sure of, which he had seen three years before. So we 

 started on again, and after two miles he stopped in the 

 midst of a great nearly level plain, and said that he had 

 dropped the bone about there. Inside of twenty feet 

 we found it in the grass. Then he led us to the place where 

 he had found it. It was the Patagonian layer, and marine, 

 and therefore of minor interest to us, and of still less 

 when we could find no further fragments. However, 

 from us who, when we leave a specimen for even a day or 

 two, build near by a monument a couple of feet high to 

 mark the place, this exhibition of locality memory drew 

 forth great admiration; for in the meantime this rider had 

 been scouring miles of country in every direction. We 

 found that these men who are constantly riding often do 

 such feats and take great pride in the ability to do them, 

 often having contests and betting on their ability to ex- 



