No sooner thought than done. In I sprang, discovering too late that I had reckoned without my host and that the river, which had been penned in for miles by the walls of the canyon, was here flowing away from its prison with amazing swiftness and power. My weak little body was as helpless as a straw in its grasp: down I went, and striking a boulder at the bottom, was flung up five feet into the air, I took in breath and closed my mouth as I went down again; tossing me hither and thither like a cork, beating me against rocks and hurling me high into the air, the river bore me swiftly on, until at last, thank God! it tired of its toy, and threw me to one side into deep water, under a willow whose welcoming branches I eagerly clasped. There I hung until I had regained my strength enough to pull myself out.
But the fossil vertebrates of the John Day beds were still across the river and the questions which I had crossed the mountain and risked my life to answer were still waiting for replies. Unwilling to return home beaten I walked up and down the river shore, and was delighted to find an old boat caught in a pile of driftwood. I dug it out with my bare hands, only to find that its seams had parted and that its bottom was as full of holes as a sieve. Not dismayed, I found a bed of sticky clay with which I calked my ship, and venturing again into the flood, managed to get to the other shore before the boat sank.
I found a place to camp lower down, at the mouth of a canyon which opened out into the level country, and on a little creek that ran in front of Uncle Johnnie’s cabin. I was very well pleased with my explorations in the fossil beds also, for I found the skull of an Oreodon, a hog-like creature which, judging from the abundance of skulls and skeletons, must have lived in droves during the time when this rock was being deposited in the lakes of this region. These animals were herbivorous in habit. Uncle Johnnie always referred to them as bears. He often brought a skull into camp with the remark, “Here’s another bar’s head. I’ve killed hundreds of ’em in ole Virginia.”
I returned to camp much elated, and was planning to pack the outfit into the Basin the next day, when to my disgust Joe Huff, who owned the horses, refused to pack them, as he did not want to run the risk of injuring them. It was useless to tell him that he had been hired to do what I wanted, etc.; he was not to be moved. So I paid him off, and saw him start for his home near Moscow, Idaho, riding bareback. I felt sorry for him, but he had a stubborn fit on, and there was no doing anything with him. After I had hired Bill Day, he wanted me to overlook the past and re-employ him, but it was too late then.
I suppose Bill Day must have weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds, but he was an expert hunter and a keen observer. He owned a herd of ponies and furnished me with all that I wanted, and as he knew every inch of the fossil beds and all the best camping grounds, his services were invaluable. He kept our larder supplied with venison, also. I think my success in that region was largely due to his assistance. I was also indebted to a Mr. Mascall, a man who lived on the second bottom of the river. He had an extra log cabin behind the one he lived in, and he let us use it as a storeroom for our extra supplies of food and for our fossils, when we began to secure them.
This Mr. Mascall had a wife and daughter, and when we came in from the fossil beds, after several weeks of camping out, it seemed almost like coming home to be able to put our feet under a table, eat off stone dishes, and drink our coffee out of a china cup, and to sleep on a feather bed instead of a hard mattress and roll of blankets. Then Mr. Mascall was a good gardener, and always had fresh vegetables, a most enjoyable change from hot bread, bacon, and coffee. I shall not soon forget his hospitality.
Fig. 26.—Skull and tusks of Imperial Mammoth, Elephas imperator.
In American Museum of Natural History.
Fig. 27.—Fossil-bearing Cliffs. (After Merriam.) Upper John Day exposure.