nes. A camp
is located near some spring or stream and collectors ride or walk over
miles of these exposures in each direction till the region is
thoroughly explored. Quite different are conditions on the Red Deer
River. Cutting through the prairie land the river had formed a canyon
two to five hundred feet deep and rarely more than a mile wide at the
top. In places the walls are nearly perpendicular and the river winds
in its narrow valley, touching one side then crossing to the other so
that it is impossible to follow up or down its course any great
distance even on horseback.

It was evident that the most feasible way to work these banks was from
a boat; consequently in the summer of 1910 our party proceeded to the
town of Red Deer, where the Calgary-Edmonton railroad crosses the
river. There a flatboat, twelve by thirty feet in dimension, was
constructed on lines similar to a western ferry boat, having a
carrying capacity of eight tons with a twenty-two foot oar at each end
to direct its course. The rapid current averaging about four miles per
hour precluded any thought of going up stream in a large boat, so it
was constructed on lines sufficiently generous to form a living boat
as well as to carry the season's collection of fossils.

Supplied with a season's provisions, lumber for boxes, and plaster for
encasing bones, we began our fossil cruise down a canyon which once
echoed songs of the _Bois brule_, for this was at one time the fur
territory of the great Hudson Bay Company.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.--American Museum Expedition on the Red
Deer River. Fossils secured along the banks were packed and loaded
aboard the large scow and floated down the river to the railway
station.]

No more interesting or instructive journey has ever been taken by the
writer. High up on the plateau, buildings and haystacks proclaim a
well-settled country, but habitations are rarely seen from the river
and for miles we floated through picturesque solitude unbroken save by
the roar of the rapids.

Especially characteristic of this canyon are the slides where the
current setting against the bank has undermined it until a mountain of
earth slips into the river, in some cases almost choking its course.
A continual sorting thus goes on, the finer material being carried
away while the boulders are left as barriers forming slow moving
reaches of calm water and stretches of rapids difficult to navigate
during low water. In one of