Granger's plan was to break camp on April 21 and head back to Tamia with a short layover near the temple ruins at Qasr el Sagha. The expedition's fieldwork would be finished for the season and the party would leave the desert. Once at Tamia, Granger and Olsen would to accompany their accumulated fossil boxes by train to Cairo and then repack them for shipment back to New York. Granger had already once extended this party's stay in the Faiyum, on February 25th when he relinquished his reservations to return to New York aboard the S.S. Celtic on March 20. Granger recognized that there was enough work in the Faiyum to keep him and Olsen occupied for another month. Now Granger prepared to leave as planned, and it was evident that it was time to do so: equipment and clothing were worn out, the food supply was low, the fossil yield was diminishing, and the desert conditions were becoming more hostile as summer approached. Osborn was being kept apprised through regular correspondence and short field reports from Granger and concurred with Granger's plan. Granger's narrative resumes with April 21st:

Sun. Apr. 21:
Broke camp and moved in to Qasr el-Sagha. Camped below the temple [ruins].

Setting up camp below the temple ruins at Qasr el Sagha. Granger's and Olsen's tent is to the right.beyond which lies the temple. The butte is Tel Schweinfurth.

Spent the afternoon with Olsen up East along the Middle Eocene escarpment where Daoud says the Barytherium came from -- we found the hills pretty well scoured. Took photos of camp and temple.

Mon. Apr. 22:
Today with Daoud, Ibrahim & Machmud we walked to the Birket [Qarun], stopping on the way at Dime´ to look on the ruins and take photographs.

At the Lake we found native fisherman and engaged them to run in their net for us. The fish come up into the shallow water along the shore in great numbers. The method of capture is to select a small bay and creep up with great caution and suddenly rush across the entrance of the bay with one end of the long gill net. Two or three naked natives then enter from the shore side and by great splashing & commotion drive the fish into the net in their attempt to reach the open lake. Several fish jumped over the net and escaped. 84 fish about 8 inches long were caught. Cost us 6 piasters. Most of the fish caught here are shipped daily to Cairo.

Saw Markgraf's trail near camp today where he had passed recently with his outfit. Apparently he is in the field again. Collected invertebrates from the Lake Moeris sediment. Ali informs us that the grub is about exhausted -- the fish will help out though.

Tues. Apr. 23:
Camels in late this afternoon with American Mail. We are to go in to Tamia tomorrow.

Collected Moeritherium jaws and weathered skulls of Tomistoma and Zeuglodon and Olsen got good turtle -- all from 1 mile west of temple.

Very hot during middle of day. Food almost entirely gone this evening -- barely enough for breakfast. Our leaving is now a necessity.

Wed. Apr. 24:
Left Qasr el-Sagha this morning and reached Tamia by three -- lunch at Cafe in Tamia. Met a Caravan of several hundred Camels being driven in to the Cairo "Sukh" [soukh, or bazaar] from the oases to the south. The owners -- five stalwart Arabs in white robes and long barreled rifles -- brought up the rear of the Caravan.

Our tent is pitched near the [Railway] Station tonight. Have paid off Ibrahim and Machmud and they leave early in the morning for Quft. Hassan and Massaout have gone to their homes. Hassan's wife baked a (?)pudding for us -- terribly greasy affair, and she and Hassan brought it up to us this evening and Hassan made her come in the tent. Olsen and I each buried a piece of the pudding in the sand and gave the balance of it to Daoud and Ali.

Thurs. Apr. 25: -- Cairo:
Got our fossil cases out of storage at Abdulla's this morning and had them weighed & shipped as luggage on our train -- Daoud and Ali sitting on them all the way and watching after their transfer. Our camp outfit was loaded on the camels and ready to start for Cairo and Olsen and I were ready to take the train when I was handed a cablegram from Prof. O. saying to continue work in Fayum. . . .

Granger and Olsen went on to Cairo for re-supply and new equipment and returned to the Faiyum on May 2nd. They worked steadily -- with few results under worsening physical conditions -- until May 23rd when they received another cabled instruction from Osborn to "return immediately". They remained in the Faiyum until 2 a.m. on May 29th when they finally departed for Tamia by night to avoid the extreme desert heat of day. They departed Tamia by train for Cairo on the 30th. On June 1st, Granger was hospitalized for swollen ankles from fleabite poisoning and remained bedridden for two weeks. He finally left Egypt on June 15th.

Granger and Olsen brought back 27 cases of fossils containing nearly 500 specimens of vertebrates, twenty-five reptiles and the rest mammals, as well as a small collection of invertebrates made from the ancient Lake Moeris beds at Qasr el Sagha and a collection of Formicidae and Coeloptera made for others at the Museum. In addition, Granger compiled a location map of all important fossil finds made by the various parties to date and gathered data on a new geological section north of Lake Qarun. He also made charts of the development stages at the two principal quarries, A and B.

One interesting omission from Granger's Notes is mention of the anthropoid primate fossil finds he and Markgraf had made in the Faiyum. Perhaps this is because Notes probably was made for Osborn's use and Osborn's interest in the study of anthropoid primates was lukewarm at best. Osborn did not want to be linked to his primate ancestry. Nevertheless, the matter of Faiyum anthropoid primate discoveries was of keen significance to most other paleontologists at the time and was considered a most exciting development.

The Faiyum finds were the center of attention at a ten-year review symposium (Symposium on Ten Years' Progress in Vertebrate Paleontology) held at the third annual meeting of the Paleontological Society (then still within the Geological Society of America) on December 29, 1911, in Washington, D.C. With a resounding endorsement of the Faiyum's anthropoid primate fossils and the promising importance of ongoing research into them, the first presenter announced:

"The discovery of the Fayûm fauna is the mosty important find of the last decade in vertebrate paleontology. It has added a new and most remarkable type of giant quadruped, primitive stages in the evoiultion of the Proboscidea, Sirenia, and Cetacea, a wide variety of Hyracoidea, besides Carnivora, Rodents, and, if Doctor Schlosser is correct, the earliest known Anthropoid Primates." (XII--Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 23, 1911, W.D. Matthew at p. 156).

Nearly all sixteen presenters who followed paid similar tribute to the Faiyum work of the British, Germans and Americans. Henry Osborn, in his symposium presentation entitled "Correlation and paleogeography", (XII--Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 23, 1911, H.F. Osborn, pp. 232-254) made no mention of the Faiyum. Walter Granger could not attend the symposium. He was on his way over the Atlantic Ocean, this time to confer with Eberhard Fraas, Max Schlosser and the other leading paleontologists in Europe.

Important work on anthropoid primates, proboscidea and whales continues in the Faiyum today and Granger's pioneering role in it was acknowledged recently with the naming of a newly discovered fossil Faiyum anthropoid primate -- Ptolemaia grangeri -- illustrated below:

Precisely when Notes was transcribed by Granger is not known, though it is certain to have occurred before October, 1907, Osborn's account was published in Century Magazine. Osborn's capacity for incorporating the work of subordinates without proper attribution is confirmed further by Granger's mention inNotes that he took the unattributed photographs used by Osborn in theCentury Magazine article.

Some pages in Granger'sNotes bear notations and linings in red crayon or pencil and in a handwriting not his own. Use by Henry Osborn of a red crayon-pencil (see image below) to annotate works by others is documented in Geoffrey Hellman's Bankers, Bones and Beetles (The Natural History Press, 1968), a very interesting book about the first 100 years of the American Museum of Natural History.

Finally, the explanation for Osborn's eleventh-hour cablegram intercepting Granger at the Tamia railroad station on April 25th and ordering him back into the Faiyum until further notice is presented in our full-length manuscript Faiyum Diary -- Forgotten Expedition to a Lost World: America's 1907 Fossil-Hunt to the Faiyum of Egypt (Unpublished Work Copyright © by Vincent L. Morgan for The Granger Papers Project. All rights reserved. Information may not be republished or redistributed without our prior written authorization).