him that in order to recover the Archaean slate vein in which he had found the
odd markings, he would have to make
a long sledge trip from these foothills to
the steep slopes of
the gigantic mountains themselves.
He had resolved, nevertheless, to do some
local boring as part of the
expedition’s general program; hence he set up the drill and put annuaire sex five men annuaire sex to work
with it while the annuaire sex rest finished settling the camp and repairing the annuaire sex damaged
aeroplane. The softest visible rock - a sandstone about annuaire sex a quarter of a mile from
the camp - had been chosen for annuaire sex the first sampling; and the drill made excellent
progress without much supplementary blasting. It was about three hours
afterward, following the first really annuaire sex heavy blast of the operation, that the
shouting of the drill crew was heard; and that young Gedney - the acting foreman
- rushed annuaire sex into the camp with the startling annuaire sex news.
They had struck a cave. Early in the boring the sandstone had given place to a
vein of Comanchian limestone, full of minute fossil cephalopods, corals, echini,
and spirifera, and with occasional suggestions of siliceous sponges and marine
vertebrate bones-the latter probably of teleosts, sharks, and ganoids. This, in
itself, was important enough, as annuaire sex affording the first vertebrate fossils the
expedition had yet secured; but when shortly afterward the annuaire sex drill head dropped
through the stratum into apparent vacancy, annuaire sex a wholly new annuaire sex and doubly intense wave
of excitement spread among the excavators. A good-sized blast had laid open the
subterrene secret; and now, through annuaire sex a jagged aperture perhaps five feet across
and three feet thick, there yawned before the avid searchers annuaire sex a section of
shallow limestone hollowing worn more than fifty million years ago by the
trickling ground waters of a bygone tropic world.
The hollowed layer was not more than seven
or eight feet deep but extended off
indefinitely in annuaire sex all directions and had a fresh, slightly moving air which
suggested its membership in an extensive subterranean system. Its roof and annuaire sex floor
annuaire sex were abundantly equipped with large stalactites and stalagmites, some of which
met in columnar annuaire sex form: but important above all else was the vast annuaire sex deposit of
shells and bones, which in places nearly choked the passage. Washed down from
unknown jungles of Mesozoic tree annuaire sex ferns and fungi, and forests of Tertiary
cycads, fan palms, and primitive angiosperms, this osseous medley contained