The Life of a Fossil Hunter

by Charles H. Sternberg

With the whip in one hand, butt end down, Cope approached the horse with the other outstretched, speaking gently to conciliate him. The horse, however, struck out with all his might. Narrowly escaping the blow, the Professor stepped back, raised the whip, and with the butt end, hit the horse behind the ear. The animal fell like a flash, and lay for some time stunned; but when he struggled to his feet, and the Professor approached him again with outstretched hand and soft words, the brute struck again. Again Cope knocked him down, and, although when he rose to his feet, he made another feeble attempt to strike, a third knock-down blow was enough for him. After that he welcomed the Professor’s advances, accepting with every symptom of pleasure the caresses bestowed upon him, and when untied, he almost dragged Cope after him in his anxiety to get to his traces. We had no more trouble with him until a long rest and plenty of food caused him to forget his punishment, and made a repetition of it necessary.

It was not until late that night, after fourteen hours of strenuous labor, that we were able to eat our supper of bacon and hardtack, and lie down for a few hours’ rest. We slung our food from a tree to get it out of the reach of any grizzlies which might come straying around in search of bread crumbs or bacon rinds. We expected any moment to be rolled out of bed by some prowling paw.

The next day we traveled along through the great level stretches that skirt the Bad Lands. The prairie was covered with thick bunches of grass, and often had been rooted up for acres by grizzlies in search of wild artichokes, a sweet morsel they love. We often saw herds of deer and elk and antelope.

Part of the time our route lay among the foothills of the Judith River Mountains to the south of us; and when we emerged again on to the open plain, we found ourselves in a great amphitheater, a hundred miles across. To the west the towering ranges of the Rockies rose in silent grandeur, their sides scarred deeply with canyons, in whose recesses the white snow gleamed and sparkled in the morning light To the south, east, and north, the Judith River Mountains, the Little Rockies, Medicine Bow, Bearpaw, and the Sweet Grass Mountains on the border line of Assiniboia made up the circle. A glorious scene! And there was exhilaration too in the thought that ours was the first wagon to roll through these rich solitudes, given up for ages to the red hunter and his game. These hills were soon to re-echo with the shriek of the locomotive, and this rich soil to nourish a thousand souls, but in the days I am recalling, we did not meet a single human being in all the forty miles of our journey.

That night, after another hard day, we halted at the head of a short and very steep ravine ending in an open valley between two ridges, whose lofty precipices abutted on the Missouri twelve hundred feet below.

This valley, Cope told us, was to be our camping ground for some time to come, as a steamboat snubbing-post was situated here. When I learned this, I threw out my roll of blankets and started it on its way to camp. It bounded down the ravine, leaping high in the air from boulder to boulder, and never stopped until it was caught in a bunch of the cactus that covered the level plain below.

Everything but the Professor’s trunk was unloaded, and the wagon pulled to the head of the gulch, where Isaac took charge of the tongue, and the Professor and I, each tying a picket rope to the hind axle and making a half-hitch to a convenient sapling, let the wagon slowly down the hill. When the rope was paid out, Isaac blocked the wheels with stones, and we advanced for another hitch, continuing in this way until we reached the bottom. The baggage was then packed down, and, after a space had been cleared of cactus, our tent was pitched. It was not until long after midnight that we sat down to cook our meal, and when we rolled into our blankets we slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.

Not only during this trip, but all through our stay in the Bad Lands, we were tormented by myriads of black gnats, which got under our hat rims and shirt sleeves, and produced sores that gave rise to pus and thick scabs. They got under the saddles and girths too, irritating the horses almost beyond endurance. We were forced, for lack of something better, to cover our faces and arms with bacon grease and to rub the skins of the horses under the collars and saddles with the same disagreeable substance.

Fossil bones always partake of the characteristics of the rock in which they are entombed, and here they were quite hard when we got in to where the rock was compact. The Professor found here the first specimen ever discovered in America of the wonderful horned dinosaurs; Monoclonius he called the first species. I assisted him in digging out his specimen of M. crassus, a species distinguished by a small horn over each orbit, and a large one on the nasal bones; and I myself discovered two species new to science. One of these, an M. sphenocerus, was six or seven feet high at the hips, and, according to Cope, must have been twenty-five feet long, including the tail. It has a long compressed nasal horn, and two small horns over the eyes.

Professor Marsh later discovered a similar form in these same fossil beds, and named it Ceratops montanus.