CHAPTER I.

My First Visit to the Rocky Mountains.

In August, 1868, I crossed the Missouri River at Omaha, and with
a small party of friends started westward by the Union Pacific railroad
up the Platte valley towards the Rocky Mountains. It was my first
visit to the far West, and all was new and strange. I had a general
idea of the geological features of the country I was to pass through in
ascending the gradual slope towards the mountains, especially the great
plains extending for hundreds of miles along my route, but the actual
reality was far beyond my anticipations when I found myself thus sur-
rounded, as far as the eye could reach in every direction, reminding
me of mid ocean with its long rolling waves brought suddenly to rest.
It was in fact the bottom of an ancient sea, and not the petrified waters,
that I then saw, and I was not long in deciding that its past history and
all connected with it would form a new study in geology, worthy of a
student's best work, even if it required the labor of a lifetime.

As we passed westward, ever ascending the sloping flanks of the
Rocky Mountains, the plains continued, but the scene changed to even
more gentle grades, and I saw we were crossing the former bed of a great
fresh-water lake. I was eager to explore it at once, as I felt sure
that entombed in the soft sandy clays that filled the present basin to
the brim, there must be remains of many strange animals new to science,
long waiting to be brought to light, and to tell the tale of their life
history to him who could read it. It has been well said that what one

by the hair, but before the knife descended, the wig came off, and the
savage lost in wonder stayed his hand, with the single exclamation " d---d
lie!" Both tell the story to this day; the preacher joyfully, but
the Indian sadly, and the latter, fearing similar mishaps, has since
spared many a tenderfoot, having deserted the warpath for a quiet pastoral
life.

Several years later, after the Indians had moved north and ceased
to make afraid, Sydney became a quiet town, famous as an outfitting post
for wagon trains north and south. It was raided occasionally by festive
cowboys, but, as a rule, scalps were safe. I knew the town better then,
and shipped from there many tons of rare fossils, especially huge
Brontotheres found in the Miocene Bad Lands further south.