Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1886-08-28
BILL NYE is VICTIMIzED.
JcusINa In ALONG SCARCE FOR AN
IcHTaycsAURUS.
Eramping Five Long Days in Search
OF an Animal That Had Been
Dead 5000 Years.

lO4ulhS a panty dDout U Sldib Out alOH1
he banks of Bitter creek on a hunting
expedition. The leader of the party was
4 yonpg man who had recently escaped
nom college with a large amount Of
knowledge which he desired 10 expert
nent with on the people of the far
West. He had heard that there was an
nhthyosaurus up somewhere along the
west side of Bitter creek. and he wanted
IS to go along md help him to find it.
l had been in the West some eight or
nine years then, and had never seen an
chthyosaurus myself, but l thought the
Foung man must know his business, 50
rot out nv Winchester and went along
with the group
We tramped over the pale, ashy, glar-
ng, staring stretch of desolation,
through burning, quiFering days of mo-
aotony and sage brush and a.kali water
and aching eyes and parched and bleed
ng lips and nostrils cut through and
eaten by the sharp alkaline air, mentally
depressed and physically worn out, but
:heered on and braced up by the light
and joyons manner of the ever-hopeful
James Trilobite Elton of Concord.
James Trilobite Elton of Concord never
noaned, never gigged back or shed a
aot, remorseful tear in this powdery,
hungry waste of gray, parchcd ruin. No
regret came forth from his lips in the
midst of this mighty cemetery, this
CHASTITY potter's field for all that nature
had ever reared that was too poor to
oear its own funeral expenses.
Now and then a lean, soiled gray coy
Die, without sufficient moral courage to
ook dead mule in the hind foot, slipped
lcross the horizon like a dirty phantom
md faded into the hot and tremulous
atmosphere. We scorned such game as
hat and tTudged on, cheered by the hope
hat seemed to spring eternal in the
breast of James Trilobite Elton of Con
soId.
-Four days we wallowed through the
lnchanging desolation. Four nights we
vent through the motions of slumbering
IN the arid bosom of the wasted earth.
On the fifth day James Trilobite Elton
aid we were now getting near the poiut
where we would find what we sought.
On we pressed through the keen, rough
blades of the seldom bunch grass, over
he shifting, yellow sand and the green
sh gray of the bad land soil which never
Ices anything but sit around through
he acccmulating centuries and hold the
world together, a kind of powdery
poison that delights to creep into the
nostrils of the pilgrim and steal away
lis brains, OF when moistened by little
now TO accumulate around the feet of
he pilgrim or on the feet of the pill
srim's mule till he has the most of an
lnsurveyed ''forty' on each foot. and
he casual observer is cheered by the
novel sight of one homestead trying to
imp another.
Toward evening James Trilobite Eton
gave a wild shrek of JOY and ran to us
rom the bed of an old creek, where he
lad found an ichthyosaurus. The ami
nal was dead Not only that, but it
lad been dead long, long timel
James Milton Sherrod said that IF
college education was of no more use to
man than that he, for one, allowed
hat his boy would have to grope through
ife with an academical education, and
Fery little of it.
] knocked my gun and went back to
eamp sadder and madden man, and.
haugh years have come and gone, am
gill irritable when / think of the five
lays we tramped along Bitter creek
searching for an animal that was no
onger alive, and our guide knew it before
be started
ventured to say TO ]. Trilobite Elton
hat night as we all sat together in the
cleaning discussing whether he should
De taken home with us in the capacity OF
guide OF as a remains, that it seemed
o me a man ought to have better sense
han to wear his young life away trying
20 have fun with his superiors in that
way
''Why, blame it all" says James,
what did you expect? You ought to
know yourself that that animal is ex-
tinctr7
''Extinckr'' says James Milton Sher-
sod, in shrill tones. 81 should say he
vas extinck That's what we're kickin'
lbout. What CALLED me was that you
should of waited till the old cuss was ex-
inck before you come to us like a man
and told us about it. You pull us
through the sand for week and blister
our heels and near kill US, and all the
lime you know that the blame brute is
ayin there In the hot sun gittin' more
.xtinck every minute Fun is fun, and
like a little nonsense now and then
gust as well as you do, but I'll be eter-
aally banished to Bitter creek if | think
it's square or right or white to play it
On your friends this kind of way You
claim that the animal has been dead
goin' on five thousand years, or some
such thing as that, and try to get out of
It that way, but long as you knew it and
we didn't, it shows that you're low
russ not 10 speak of it. What difference
does it make to us, l say, whether this
orute was or was not dead and swelled
up like a pizen'd steer long before More
got his zoologickle show together2 We
didn't know it. We haven't seen the
Salt Lake papers for weeks. You use
your edjecation to fool people with. My
opinion is that the day is not far distant
when you will wake up and find your
self in the bottom of an untimely grave
You bring us hundred and fifty miles
to look at an old bone pile all trampled
into the ground, and then say that the
animal is extinck. That's a great way
10 talk 10 an old man like me, man old