The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-02-04

IL was ready to move It WelSHeu oUJ pounds, and as we tried to take it down the mountainside 1t got away from us, and men, bones, a scraper, and badly frightened horse arrived at the bottom of the mountain in a heap together, but the bones were the least injured of the party.
 In the fossil beds of Texas the ground is a fine brilliantly red clay, so striking in color that the Indians formerly used it for their paint. This clay readily dissolves in water and is q long time in settling, so that the water of the streams is loaded with it. and he who washes often in that land either himself or his clothes, soon acquire the hue of the true red man. The persistence of the color is shown in the bread made with this water,
 for it has a decided brick color and a bficky hardness, too, for the cowboy cook has more faith in his teeth and
 stomach than in the value of baking
 powder and shortening.
 The summer months are those of eX-
 treme drought, and in July and August one sees many a pitful tragedy among the cattle and horses, which must go
 for miles to the nearest water and then back to the hills for the scant
 forage of mesquite grass which has
 withstood the heat of the sun,
 I travelled north from the little town
 of Seymour and crossed the Big
 Wichita River dry shod My animals
 refused to drink the salt water trickled
 between the stones and the banks
 were crowded with cattle so weak that
 they were scarcely able to drag them-
 selves, between the miserable water and the equally poor forage. That
 day I went twenty four hours hunting for water, and finally camped on the eegof pool where I killed four wa ter n.0ccasns and where my driver fought daily with about fifty head of cattle for enough of the stagnant wa
 ter for our horses and ourselves. When the pool dried we moved to a pool of salt water, where we stayed for a week; from there to a pool of soda alkali and then to deep hole which had all the bad qualities of all the others. After few days of this last hole I decided to come home, as my
 stomach, which did not share my en-
 thusiasm for 'bone hunting, ceased
 to work in sheer disgust,
 It was on that same trip that after
 driving twenty miles without finding water I met a man who had come
 seventeen miles in the other direction
 and asking for water; the outlook was
 little dismal Some disgusted way
 farer had set two sandstone rocks in
 the road and scratched on them the
 grim joke of the thirsty land On one was written, Water 1000 miles (with ar arrow pointing in one direction,) and on the other, Hell, mile (with an arrow pointing in the opposite direc- tion.)
 This last summer I went again to Texas and found all different; in com mon with the rest of the Southwest Texas was visited by superabund- arce of rain; instead of the usual drought the land was suffering from the excess of unreasonable rains and washouts on the railroads; flooded streams and ruined crops were the happenings on every hand. The stream which was but series of pools was now rushing torrent, twenty feet deep and visibly rising; we watched it with considerable anxiety, checking its advance by every clod and grass blade it covered, for if it rose five feet it would cover our camp and trap us in an ugly place. Greatly to our de- light the rise ceased before it reached the top of the bank, and the fall was as rapid as the rise, but it took tWenty-four hours for the water to and of course tfe region I wanted to work in was on the other side of the creek; the next morning I forded the stream. waist deep and be- gan the hunt for fossils.
 One day I located a splendid speci- men and proceeded to uncover it. At every instant 1t showed better and I soon found that I had veritable prize such specimen as one finds only once in a summers search. The work until the major portion of 8 nearly perfect skull was uncovered, and then came the inevitable rain. Hastily I covered the specimen with newspapers and then shovelled dirt over it and departed for the shelter of the nearest mesquite bush Now a bush is fraud and snare; from a distance it looks quite thick and shady, but when man tries to find shelter under it from rain or sun it is just about as good as an um- brella with the cloth stripped off. So deserted the mesquite bush and took 8 walk in the rain till it was over and the sun came out and dried me.
 The next day I uncovered the speci- time I got the skull uncovered and soaked it with glue to harden it and covered it with paper soaked in flour paste, and things looked promising, when 1t began to rain again. As before [ covered the specimen with dirt. gath l cred together the packages I had tied and retired under the shelter if an over- hanging rock-which did not overhang | as much as it might. There I huddled, | holding my precious bag of paper pack 1 ages in my arms to keep them dry i The rain proved to be driving down.