OCR Text |
Show 182 BY PATH AND TRAIL. world marveled, but believed. Yet when Andres Do-rantes and Alonzo Maldonado returning after years of wandering in the desert and mountain lands of south western America, recorded the existence of a great forest they had visited, where precious stones of jasper and onyx strewed the ground, and where trees of agate and carnelian, blown down by a mighty wind, encumbered the earth, there was an uppricking of ears among the learned men of Madrid, then a wagging of heads and finally loud and incredulous laughter. As well ask them to believe in the existence of a herd of cattle suspended in mid- air, frozen into rigidity and retaining their shapes and outlines. Yet the forest was here and is here now, unchanged and unchangeable. In the memorial to congress, adopted in 1895, by the legislative assembly of Arizona, requesting that Chal cedony Forest be made a national park, the area of the forest is defined to be " ten miles square, covered with trunks of agatized trees, some of which measure over 200 feet in length, and from seven to ten feet in diam eter." In this official statement we have the limits of the wonderful region accurately defined, and the mate rial of the trees recorded. I have seen the petrified trees of Yellowstone Park, some of them yet standing, the stone trees of Wyoming, and those of the Calistoga Grove of California, but the petrified region of Arizona is the only place in the world where the trees are in such number as to merit the name of a forest. In delicacy of veining, in brilliancy and va riety of coloring, they outclass all other petrifications. But Professor Tolman, the geologist of the University of Arizona, tells me there is another notable distinction which places this forest of chalcedony in a class by itself. |