Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/215

 Two COMMONWEALTH BUILDERS. 207 Dalles, then the head of navigation on the Columbia, the gate- way through which all the rough, reckless mining population must pass on their way to the newly discovered gold fields of Eastern Oregon. Here, too, was an army post from which men and supplies were sent to all parts of the Northwest. ' ' An army officer returning from an expedition against hos- tile Indians brought Mr. Condon his first Eastern Oregon fossils from the Crooked River country. These fossils aroused the keen interest of the student of nature and in 1862 or '63 he obtained permission to accompany a party of cavalry carrying supplies to Harney Valley. They returned by way of old Camp Watson, on the John Day River, and here Mr. Condon found his first fossils in the now famous John Day Valley. eager for more, and as soon as the Indians had been subdued and it was safe to venture among those hills and ravines with- out an army escort, Mr. Condon spent his vacations exploring in the John Day country. On one of these trips he found and named Turtle Cove, which has since proved to be one of the richest fossil beds in the valley. He employed young men to spend their summers collecting the fossils exposed by the wWr of winter storms. He made friends with the rough teamsters who drove the great government freight wagons from Fort Dalles to the army posts in the wilderness. As these teamsters returned with empty wagons they often brought a few rocks or a fine box of fossils for their new friend at The Dalles. In a few years Mr. Condon found in his possession a large quan- tity of valuable material that must be classified and described. But he was without scientific books, was thousands of miles from the great libraries and museums of the East, and far from other scientists with whom to confer. 11 Fortunately, at this time the United States Government was making its famous geological survey of the fortieth par- allel, embracing a strip of land one hundred miles in width, and connecting the geology of the great plains east of the Rocky ' Mountains with that of California and the Pacific Coast. One evening as this great work was nearing completion, Mr. Condon was delighted to learn that Clarence King, the leader of the survey, had reached The Dalles, and he lost no time before meeting this distinguished geologist. Mr. King was deeply interested in the pioneer discoverer's account of Oregon geology and the next day found him in the Condon home studying the unique collection.
 * ' These glimpses of this fossil field only served to make him