One has some strange day dreams often, at least I have. My only daughter died some years ago; though in imagination she is often with me, I thought once I had gone to sleep. When I woke next morning I realized that time had turned backward. I found myself beside the boundless sea, and it was not the sea I had looked on but yesterday, I was sitting under a limestone escarpment, with a beach before me of fine sand. The waves rolling outside of a bar that had been deposited by a river, whose mouth I could see on the eastern side of the steep bluff under which I sat. “Thank God,” I cried, “You have taken me back to the old Cretaceous Ocean.” I had explored her elevated and denuded bed for twenty seasons in the Short Grass country of Western Kansas; collecting her rich fauna of reptiles and fishes. To know that I was to be permitted to actually see the animals themselves, in their natural environments. To explore her shore lines. Her sheltered bays. To see her fleets of plesiosaurs come sailing in after an ocean cruise; her great mosasaurs, and bony fishes. How glorious, but where is Maud. The thought came to me like a flash. Life had seemed so much more enjoyable with her beside me. With her appreciative ear, to listen for what my mind conceived, and my lips uttered, she never contradicted me when I uttered an opinion. No! she realized that I, with my vast store of experience might well be her teacher, and she enjoyed the story of my life so much that her eager face, and flashing eyes, were a stimulus to my mind, awakening old experiences and memories long forgotten. Although she had been with me for a short time, she had become necessary to me. I knew how much I would miss her in the adventures that lay before me. While these thoughts were passing, I was delighted to hear her gentle voice call out “Papa, here I am.” And looking up I saw her leaning out of the mouth of a cave a short distance above me. I cried out with pleasure and rushing to the beach picked up the dry trunk of a small pine, with stumps of branches on either side. I carried it to the bluff and leaning against it, made a convenient ladder for Maud to descend on which she rapidly did, and stood beside me. Of course our chief talk was about this miraculous event in our lives and we wondered what was in store for us. We thrilled with delight when we realized how lovely the country was. The climate temperature. We smelled the delicious odor of magnolia blooms, for a beautiful forest skirted the hills and plains before us to the east, and north and south, while to the west, as far as the eye could reach a great ocean, whose western shore line must have been thousands of miles toward the setting sun. Taking her arm we walked down to the beach. In the zone between high and low tide, unlimited oysters, no larger than silver half dollars lay strewn around. While plowing through the sand, were Inoceramus shells that measured four feet high, and five feet long, leaving a great trail behind. The shore line was strewn with many of these huge shells. We mentioned the many uses they could be put to, for our convenience. Thin and transparent they would do for windows in the house, I planned to build. They would take the place of shingles, and even doors. We enjoyed a feast of raw oysters with the sea water for seasoning. We then went to work hauling up from the piles of driftwood, trunks of small trees near the cave. Which Maud told me would make her a nice room as it was high and dry with a floor of white sand. By building four walls with the logs, leaving spaces for windows and doors, we succeeded after many days of labor in having a room twelve by fourteen feet. Then we put on a roof, of the large shells, hung our doors and windows, filled the spaces between the logs with clay, and moss, built a fire place and chimney. The effect of the light passing through the shells was very beautiful indeed. Our original ladder led to Maud’s Cave, through a trap door. I gathered the fragrant boughs of pine trees for the beds. We cared little for furniture, pictures and ornaments. How insignificant man’s costliest works compared to the works of the great Creator, His air, and water, His glorious sea forest and plain, the starry firmament on high, given us so freely. How rich we were, though possessing only the clothes on our backs, and the few tools I had in my collecting bag. A few matches and some strings of sinew I had cut in another age, I also found a file in the lowest corner of my collecting bag, and from fragments of bone made some fish-hooks, we had built a chimney and in the open fireplace Maud heated water in a deep sea shell while I caught a string of nice fishes, which she broiled for supper or fried for breakfast. I also found the tracks of a turtle, whose bones and skull I discovered in the chalk of Kansas. Professor Cope named it Torycheles latiremus. Suspecting that she had hidden some eggs in the dry sand, I dug around in it with my hands and found a hat full of her soft shelled eggs. With the fish we had many most delightful repasts, and we talked of the time when we hoped to explore this new region, the Early Cretaceous. Study its rich fauna and flora. After building our cabin, as we were very tired after a strenuous day, Maud kissed me good night and retired to her room in the cave, while I lay down in the corner of the house. At the first streak of day a fire was builded, and breakfast started. I had made a pail of a deep shell shaped like a woman’s hood, and called later by Conrad Haploscapha grandes, the first great hood. I had bored a hole through either edge, and with an aralia vine for a handle, I carried it to a nearby hill; where a lovely spring of pure water gushed out, and returned with it brimful of the life saving liquid. We used thin shells, we had found on the beach, for plates and made our knives and forks and spoons of wood. At breakfast Maud asked me if I knew where we were. “Yes, dear,” I replied, “we are in Western Kansas. These limestone bluffs are composed of jointed limestone. Some day a gorge will be cut through them by the Smoky Hill River ninety feet deep, and a mile long, and it will be in Trego County just below the mouth of Hackberry Creek. Get your hat and we will see!” “I am ready, papa,” she cried, so with collecting bag over my shoulder, and pick in hand, we walked rapidly along the hard sandy shore line. We soon rounded the point, and as I suspected the shore swung off into a vast amphitheatre-like cove. We could just see the distant headland, far to the north. While the land and sea curved in toward the east and back to the north, forming a great land locked bay.

“O see papa!” Maud cried, “what is that lying on the water just off shore? It looks like a huge log half submerged.” “No dear. I believe it is a Tylosaur or great ram-nosed lizard, the monarch of this ocean. See! he raises a conical head above the water, that terminates in a long bony ram. His head is five feet long. See his four powerful paddles begin to move! his eel-like tail is longer than head and trunk combined. Watch its graceful and rapid undulations.” “My,” cried Maud, “it is larger than the storied sea serpents of sailors and seaside resorts. It must be fifty feet long.” “Fully that,” I answered. “I wonder what has started him off in such a hurry?” “What does that streak of foam mean yonder?” asked my companion. “It is another saurian coming to battle, dear,” I answered. The scene was indeed exciting. We clapped our hands and shouted encouragement to our saurian as he lashed the water, and beat it into a foam, that floated behind in a long curling wake. Or patches were caught up by the passing breeze and wafted away as lightly as the bubbles children love to blow. We had ascended the point as we rounded it, and so are high enough to watch the battle royal. As they come together like colliding express trains, our reptile plunges his bony ram into the quivering flesh of his opponent, piercing heart and lungs. Withdrawing his ram, he lingers near while the dying mosasaur reddens the salty brine with his life-blood. A few convulsive struggles, and he lies a helpless mass on the surface, while his victor hies away to other conquests. “I never knew these Tylosaurs grew to such huge dimensions,” said Maud, “You know the one in the American Museum is only about thirty feet long, and that was considered large for the species.” “Yes, I know,” I replied. “But I also know of one huge skeleton belonging to the University of Kansas at Lawrence, that measures fifty feet in length. His enormous head is five feet long, the same size evidently as this one. Who knows but that 5,000,000 years from now his skeleton may be exhumed from the chalk of Kansas and exhibited at the Museum of the University!” “I remember the mosasaurs, papa, you described in ‘The Life of a Fossil Hunter.’ After the Tylosaurus came the flat paddles Platecarpus, with its blunt ram or rostrum at the end of the nose; then Clidastes, a lithe creature and more elegantly built than the other two.” “Yes, dear, I have been fortunate in the discovery of complete skeletons of these fine swimmers. I sent a very beautiful skeleton of a Tylosaur to the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. (Fig. 5). Skeletons of Platecarpus to Tübingen University, as well as a Tylosaurus. And one to The Museum of Toronto University, Canada, and another to the Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, Canada. A beautiful Clidastes to Vassar College, New York, a fine head and trunk to Carnegie Museum, at Pittsburgh, Pa. The Mosasaurs, you know, all have short necks and long tails. The jaws are armed with recurved teeth and a set on either side in the roof of the mouth near the gullet enable them to hold their prey, so they could not escape if they opened their mouths. They had an aid to swallowing their food, by means of a ball and socket hinge in the center of the lower jaws, just behind the tooth-bearing bones. This enabled them to expand the lower jaws and shortening them so as to force the food down the throat.”

“See Papa,” said Maud, “The rising tide has floated the dead saurian towards the shore.” We walked to the beach and our united efforts enabled us to pull him in. He was a magnificent example of the sea life of his day. I doubt if ever a swimmer excelled this one in speed. The four powerful paddles and lithe form, and the long tail in constant vibration, enabled him to cut the water like the prow of a racing yacht. His entire body was covered with small scales like those of a diamond rattler, arranged in beautiful colored designs, and highly polished. The scales sparkling in iridescent splendor. “How well poised the head,” said Maud. “How large the eyes, protected by sclerotic plates of bone now glazed in death.” “Wonderfully beautiful,” I answered, “So God creates His creatures, His plants, His crystals. Man’s feeble efforts to imitate nature how crude and clumsy.”

“I think Maud it would be a good plan to cut off strips of the skin for ropes and sails, and many other useful things. I will make you a hammock of a wide strip.” “Very well,” she answered, “Let us go to work.” While busily engaged, we were covered with moving shadows and looking up saw enormous Pteranodonts those glorious flying reptiles, hovering over head. With broad expanded wing, some twenty feet from tip to tip, they swooped downward, or rested in graceful attitudes in mid air. Their great eyes scanned the ocean before us for fishes, and when one was discovered dropped like a shot into the bay rapidly reappearing with a fish between their toothless beaks. One after another broke the mirror like surface of the deep, and always came to the surface with a fish. Their unerring sight had discovered. No eagle ever dropped quicker on his frightened quarry than these lizards. The scene before us was exciting indeed.

After finishing our labor and stretching the skin of our Mosasaur on the sand to dry we continued our stroll along the sand. In a deep hole, we admired a whole colony of the most beautiful swimming crinoids, or sea lilies we had ever seen. They were stemless and floated with the currents of Mosaurian Bay, as I had named the sheet of water on the new map I had made. Their bodies, about the shape of half an egg, with an opening in the center, and ten arms radiating from the margin. These arms were three feet long, with feathered edges. Over the mouth too, were smaller arms used to comb off into the mouth the tiny animal life of the sea, that was strained through, and caught in the meshes of the feathered arms. My boys found hundreds of these crinoids in the chalk on Beaver Creek, Kansas, called Uintacrinus socialis. We enriched many Museums with them.

“Papa,” said Maud, “let us go into the woods to escape the heat.” It was beginning to be felt, as the sun has climbed over the trees, and the heat beats upon the dry sands. We first entered a hard and soft wood forest, composed largely of Sassafras, Magnolia, Linden, Birch in endless variety, Cinnamon, Sweet Gum, and many other of the first trees with heart and bark like our existing forests of the twentieth century. There was a thick underbrush of wild roses and aralia vines, with their beautiful three and five lobed dentate leaves. The brooks were lined with rushes, and ferns and other familiar vegetation. We could see deeper in the forest the stately Redwood in serried ranks, as far as the eye could reach; colonnades of God’s first temple. Here indeed we found the coveted shads. The trunks like Gothic columns lifted their stately forms two hundred feet on high, with densely packed crowns of living green, that cut off the direct rays of the sun. They filtered through like those through stained glass filling the woods with tinted and mysterious light. “How grand,” I cried, “to live so close to God and His great heart, Nature’s heart. God is the very embodiment, everywhere of nature, even ‘the spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens a shining frame, there great original proclaim.’ There, Maud, do you see the damp sand along the river shore. See how the leaves have fallen in it, some lie flat, others with stem down, are half buried; all will be covered with the ocean mud at high tide, there they will remain until pressed by the masses of rock that will be laid down upon the deposit, it will be hardened into sandstone, and the leaf impressions will be preserved for millions of years. Until in the twentieth century, I will dig them from the solid rock in the central plains of Kansas, and Lesquereux and Ward, and Knowlton and Wilson, will identify them.”

So we wandered on through mighty aisles in this great temple, where God loved to walk, though all unseen by our mortal eyes, we felt His presence near. “O Papa,” cried Maud. “See the ground is strewn with edible acorns. There were no squirrels last winter to store them away. And there are some ripe figs among the green ones in yonder tree. If you will gather the figs, I will fill my apron with acorns and we will have a new dish for dinner.” “All right,” I replied and soon gathered a large supply. We carried our treasures home; and while Maud cracked the acorns between two cobblestones, I secured a strong shell for a mortar and a rounded stone for a pestle and ground the fruit and nuts together, which we made into little cakes, they with hard boiled turtle eggs made a dinner we enjoyed.

I had scraped a shell full of salt from the face of a precipice where the water of the sea had beaten high against it and on evaporating left a thick layer of salt behind. And so the day passed, every moment showing us a new phase of the Creator’s handiwork. We soon decided that as the sea life here was so luxuriant, we would build a ship to sail the quiet waters of the Mosasaurian Bay. I succeeded in planning one, with Maud’s assistance, that promised safety and comfort. I selected half a dozen straight redwood logs, thirty feet long; burned off the ends and branches. With the aid of fire dug them out, and stretched over them the dried skin of mosasaurs. (Many had been killed in their battles and we had secured their skins). Each compartment was air tight and very buoyant, I rived out boards from the redwood logs, and lashed them across the boats for a platform, on which we built cabins fore and aft, and erected a main mast from which our sails were stretched from yard arms, manipulated with ropes from the same tough hide that we geared as sails. Huge rocks we heaved on deck and attached ropes to them and used them as anchors. We made state rooms, kitchen, and sitting room, amid ship. After many days of labor, we finished our craft, and were ready for life on the ocean wave.

We resolved not to venture far from shore and to cast anchor in some quiet land locked bay at night, Maud was to handle the steering apparatus, while I cared for the sails, Maud cooked dainty morsels from land and sea and bayou. We not only got turtle eggs but the turtles themselves, and a great variety of fishes, mackerel, herring, etc. While building our ship we had unlimited adventures, because each morning and evening we walked off into the forest or explored the sea-shore, or walked along the winding river, or mossy bayou. But as my attention was occupied in the boat building I could not keep notes of these adventures. We named our little ship The Swan, not because of the beauty of the boat, but because it floated as lightly as a swan on the waters of Mosasaurian Bay.

One lovely morning in early June when life was the richest, and the forest had attained perfection; we hoisted our great square sail, and loosened our rudder bands, and put to sea. With a gentle breeze stirring, and with only a gentle ripple on the bosom of the deep; with no rocky breakers in shore, the motion on board was delightful. “Look Papa,” cried Maud, as a great fish, fifteen feet long, dashed by in pursuit of a school of mackerel, that were struggling to get into water to escape his murderous jaws. He was armed with long conical teeth, those in front where the face with its short muzzle looked like a bull dog, the horrid fangs were four inches long; in the center of the head was a triangular crest, that cut the waves like the dorsal spine of a shark. He beat the water into spray, in his eager pursuit of his prey; and many a fish fell a victim to his appetite. His skull was two feet long, with powerful lower jaw, his great pectoral fins were over three feet long. The rays had sharp outer edges. He could set and use them as a sword to gash his enemies, the great white sharks. His forked tail, with span of over four feet, would cause an awful blow when used as a weapon; large glistening scales, covered the entire body. Maud called my attention to the fact that our huge fish had finished breakfast, and was swimming back into the deep water of the bay, quite leisurely, so graceful in motion a living five horse power motor boat. “You remember,” she said, “the skeleton you sent of this fish to the British Museum.” “O yes,” I replied, “Mr. Pycraft wrote a description of it for the Illustrated London News, March 1, 1913.” (Fig. 4).

“My son George found and collected this fine specimen, I prepared it.” “You must be as pleased to see the boys make such noted discoveries,” she said. “O yes, because it encourages them to keep at work, in this life work of mine. As a boy I loved nature, I was a hunter too and used to kill buffalo and antelope. But after close association with the most famous Naturalist America has produced, Prof. E. D. Cope of Philadelphia, who often told me that though we must destroy our enemies and protect our friends, as a matter of self protection, yet wanton destruction of life was a crime. The more I thought of this suggestion the more I came to fully believe it. God loves the creatures He has created and will surely punish man for needless destruction of the beautiful birds and fur bearing animals, so they can decorate their own persons, wearing the borrowed plumage, and silky furs of his creatures. I long ago gave up killing wild animals, and for years could say with Goldsmith, ‘No herds that roam the valley wide to slaughter I condemn, Moved by the power that pities me, I learn to pity them.’ However as I like meat I am obliged to qualify the stanza by saying, as is reported Goldsmith’s wife had said, ‘No herd that roves the valley wide to slaughter I condemn. The butcher kills the meat for me, I buy the meat of him.’ In other words I let my sons do the hunting. My great pleasure as you know dear girl, is to dig with pick and shovel from the rock, the animals of the past, to clean and prepare the crumbling bones, and by the power of the imagination breathe into them new life. And has not God shown us His appreciation of this love we both possess by bringing us back here among His creatures of another day.”

“O! Papa!” cried Maud. “See the water is cut by the spines of great sharks twenty-five feet long. See some are so near the ship in this transparent water that we can see them perfectly.” “There,” I answered, “is a Portheus they seem to be in pursuit of. That big shark passes immediately under the Portheus. He turns on his back, and his huge mouth opens, look at the many rows of wicked looking teeth. How they gleam in the light, they are sharp as razors.” “See how many different forms of teeth in different parts of the mouth.” “Yes dear I remember that in the mouth of one I sent to Munich in 1882, from the Kansas Chalk Dr. Eastman found twenty-five synonyms, or species that had been described from loose teeth. Watch, there are several other big sharks coming to the assistance of the one who is after the Portheus. We will hoist the sail and try and keep pace with the battle, that surges westward, watch the rudder Maud while I loosen the main sail! It bellied to the strengthening breeze, urging on our ship with increasing speed until we were again among them. The Portheus now swimming for life was the foci of the sharks, that were coming to the attack from all directions. One would dive under the fish, and receive for his pains a stroke from his powerful tail that would put him out of commission, another would receive a thrust from the sword-like ray of the front fin. Undaunted, others hurried up like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer. Though many were wounded in the fray our hero fish at last succumbed to numbers, who gashed his body with their lance-like teeth, and the water was tinged with his life-blood; weaken and overpowered, he gradually ceased struggling. The sharks gathered to the feast. One however was so badly wounded by the Portheus, that he went to the oozy bottom with him. I have preserved in the Museum of the University of Kansas a shark twenty-five feet long, and mingled with his remains were the bones of a Portheus. The evident result of such a combat as we witnessed on Mosasaurian Bay.”

We lowered our sail, and drifted idly on the swelling tide, that led towards shore. Maud steered for the mouth of a large river’s mouth, and succeeded in getting the boat into deep water under a protecting bank, and we snubbed our ship to some saplings and also cast our anchors over board, as an additional aid to holding the boat in place. I crossed the gang plank, I had connected with the shore, and went off into the woods after berries, for dinner, while Maude cast her fish lines over board, and lighted a fire, I brought home a couple of quarts of raspberries, and found Maud had caught and prepared a nice mess of fishes, that were sizzling over the fire. She soon had a nice meal ready. So the day passed and we early sought our state rooms, I first however, recited a poem I wrote on board a C. P. R. Steamboat, enroute from Port McNicoll to Port Arthur in June, 1914:

A LAKE TRIP

We woke next morning much refreshed as the night had been cool. After breakfast we were ready for the adventures of another day. Drifting out gently on the broad waters of the bay, we were delighted to see a school of Plesiosaurs come sailing in from some distant cruise. These strange sea lizards, with long powerful neck and four paddles, and a mere stump of a tail. They were on a fishing excursion, as the herring and mackerel were now coming in to spawn near shore. These monster saurians swam like a snake bird below the surface, their long necks and heads darted hither and thither above and below exploring a space of forty feet in search of fishes. We could see the flash of shining teeth as a luckless fish was captured. Some of them floated on the surface, and with swan-like neck and body they moved in graceful circles, or sped along at a terrific pace picking up their morning meal, from the countless panic stricken fishes, that vainly sought to escape their tooth-armed jaws. I told Maud of a complete skeleton that had once been found by a farmer in the Kansas chalk of Butte Creek, Logan County. “He started to excavate a place for a stable when he uncovered some huge vertebrae, and ribs over five feet long. He supposed they were elephant bones, and as they were broken, he thought they could not be saved, and so dug up the bones with the chalk. They were dumped into a cow yard and beaten to powder under their feet, and could never be restored. I grieved much over the loss to science of that splendid specimen that has never been duplicated. Dr. S. W. Williston, the oldest living American Vertebrate Paleontologist, described the few bones I was able to save from the general wreck. He did me the honor of naming it after me.” “What a pity,” cried Maud. “It must be terrible for you to learn of such vandalism.” “Yes, dear,” I replied. “I doubt whether any mortal suffers more from this kind of vandalism due entirely to ignorance than I. I remember finding some very large turtles in the Upper Miocene of Phillips County, Kansas, that had been killed evidently by a sand storm, as they were all resting on their carapaces, as if traveling in one direction. I secured over twenty of these land turtles, and among them was the most perfect and beautiful one I have ever collected, although Dr. Weiland of Yale University told me that if five of the most perfect fossil turtles known, were placed together a couple I sent his museum, would rank 2 and 3. I had occasion to photograph this splendid specimen, and had laid it on edge on a deal table. I then went into a carpenter shop for assistance in moving another, too heavy for me to handle. When we got to the table the man helping me sprang on it (as he thought he could lift the one we were carrying easier), his weight was so great, it bent the boards on whose further ends the fine specimen was resting, and it came to the floor with a crash. It was broken to pieces so small it could not be saved and restored. So one of these animals so perfect in all human probability it will never be duplicated, was destroyed. The loss was terrible for me.” “You have had some bitter experiences,” said Maud, tears standing in her sympathetic eyes. “Many indeed, Maud,” I answered. “But while we have been talking our plesiosaurs have put to sea. Their distant wakes are just visible.” “See, papa, what a strange looking fish. What is it do you suppose?” “Maud, that to me is the best armored and most ferocious fish I have ever known. I used to think the man-eating sharks, off the Florida coast were the most blood thirsty of the order, but this one is still worse. Notice the head is prolonged in front into a long round bony snout, or ram. On account of this I called it a snout fish when I first discovered their bones in the Kansas chalk. The ram ends, you notice, in a sharp point eight or ten inches long. Then at the end of the mouth are four lance-like teeth projecting forward, and outward. The object was for these to cut the breach his ram had made in the quivering flesh of a mosasaur wider, so he could force his head into the bleeding flesh to the eye rims. But his most terrible weapons are his pectoral fins. See, they are four feet long. Serrated on the cutting or outer edge, enameled and sharp as a knife. They can be locked, and stand out straight from the body. A sudden swing would, if he was close to a mosasaur cut a gash several feet long in its vitals. See these fins span over eight feet. I pity the fish or reptile that comes his way.” “Watch, papa!” cried Maud. “There comes a huge shark. He certainly doesn’t mean to attack such a well-armed fighter, does he?” “I should not be surprised,” I answered. “I believe a shark of this size, at least twenty-five feet long, will attack anything that has life.” The shark made a sudden dive under the snout fish, but before he could turn the fish set his right sword-like fin and swinging suddenly to the left made an awful gash into the side of the shark laying open and slashing his vital organs. Relaxing his efforts he sank into the ooze of the ocean bed, followed by the snout fish to feast off his carcass. And so we idly drifted with the currents and study the wondrous fauna of this strange sea and land. We see Marsh’s loon diving for fishes, and many other birds not known to science. One day while resting from the excessive heat in the shade of a redwood Maud was very tired and soon fell asleep. I, too, leaning against a mossy log, dozed off.