34 
THE MUSEUM. 
I resolved to scale these heights from the inside of the horse-shoe, so one day I 
rode around several miles, to the mouth of a vast canon that seemed to cut to the 
heart of the mountain. I followed this canon towards its head, and entered its 
highest tributary branch. On one side the precipices rise three hundred feet; on 
the other conic masses aspire, and are no doubt the dents of its keeled backbone. 
Between them is a little slope of grass and weeds, a sight strangely rare in this region. 
But fossils I could not find successfully; indications there were not a few, and of large 
beasts, but nothing sufficiently well preserved to be sure of. I searched carefully, but 
night was coming on and darkness added horrors to such a scene, so I hastily 
descended the ravine. As I went I passed some washed stones in its sandy bottom. 
One was strange in form, and I picked it out. It was heavy and massive, and lo ! a 
bone, unworn and freshly broken from some monster, exceeding in size anything I 
had yet obtained. I hastened away and resolved to return again, meanwhile specu¬ 
lating on what my bone could mean. I am rarely unable to place a bone or fragment, 
but this one defied my lore. Part of a skull, but of huge proportions, it looked one 
while like part of an under jaw, again like the basal support of a huge horn. When 
I reached my faithful beast night had fallen, and I wrapped the precious fragment in 
my overcoat, strapped it behind my saddle, and made for camp. As I rode through 
the brush my straps gave way, my bone fell to the ground, and I had lost the result 
of my toil. 
Another morning saw me on the horse, and following my trail through the sage¬ 
brush. Near the mountain I found my bone lying safely away under a bush. Then 
for my high canon. Again I was there ; again I traversed its avenue. I found 
nothing, I saw nothing ; I left it. I searched the surrounding cliffs, and found a 
novel companion of the old elephants in a tapiroid quadruped as large as the Indian 
rhinoceros. At evening I returned and passed down the canon again; as I crossed a 
ledge, the idea occurred to me to look back from that point. I looked long and 
carefully, but saw nothing. I gave it up ; the monster was hidden in some crevice or 
covered by debris, so that I should never find him. 
The next morning I started for the gray walls of the Mammoth Buttes. I found 
my ledge, and remembered my thought to look back from it. I did so, and spied 
a red mass projecting from the wash. I dug it up ; ’t was a bone; beyond I found 
another, and then part of a large shoulder blade, then the hinder part of a skull; and 
so I had discovered the grave of another monster, of larger build than any I had 
seen. I paced the canon for more fragments; I scanned every foot of the cliff, but 
without success. At last I wandered toward the spot where a moraine filled its 
upper end, and looking at my feet as I walked, saw again the welcome red-rusted 
bone enter the rock. Here was the fountain head. Pick, sledge and chisel soon 
exposed an enormous skull with a perfect set of teeth, a huge polished tusk, of sabre 
form, curving downward from the jaw, and a pair of massive horns rising from each 
eyebrow. His muzzle was soon exposed ; its end had a pair of massive overhanging 
cornices, which met in a deep notch at the middle, and below this point the conic end 
