The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-08-20


ness is not confined to New JERSEY, but
over in Delaware and Maryland there
are similar swamps, where the shingle
business has been carried on for years
One of the swamps in Delaware extends
over twenty-five square miles, and
hardly a house in Sussex County but
what is shingled with the ancient de-
| posit."
| 81 tell ye," said an old farmer from
| this region, ''that we're alvin on Gu
rious kind O. crust round here. In pin
of fact, my farm might be said to be
perched on a g'lar wood-pile; there
ain t no end to it. | built a foundation
to barn some years ago down in Del
aware on the swamp lot, and the furth-
er down l dug the more logs | came on
to. and | reckon way down it's clean,
solid wood, and when a fire breaks out
IN the swamp you want to keep your
eyes peeled. now I'm a-talkin'. How
so? Well, I'll jest give you a little of
my experience. When 1 first married
my old woman I bought patch right
on the edge of the swamp, and the land
ran right into it about half mile
That summer it was monstrous dry, and
after awhile the fires began to break out,
and afore we knew it it had crept up to
within thousand feet of the house.
But we got at it with brush, and, as we
thought, put it out, and did; but that
night was awoke by hearin' a crash so
loud that you'd a-thought the hull house
had gone down, and when l got out
there was blazing fire right over by my
| fodder house. | got there in about two
minutes, and tell We l was scared.
There wasn't hide nor hair of the house,
but deep yawnin' hole about fifty feet
across, and the Lord knows how deep,
and burning red hot, just like a volcany.
tell ye | got my folks out of that Dig
gins for while now. Fortunately it
came on to rain the next day and soaked
it out, and | amt a-drawin' the long
bow when tell you that that hull ken
try had been tunneled by the fire. You
see, it had crept along under ground for
nigh thousand feet, eating away the
wood, and finally when it got under
the fodder, the weight of the
stuff broke the crust in and down it
went into reg'lar pit of fire. | tell
you it was an unsartin place to live on and
| was thankful enough that it didn't get
under the house. We'd never have
known what hurt us; we'd just melted
| down quick. Yes, there's heaps of
places in the swamp district that's
eaten out jest the same way. The fire
will run along for miles, sometimes,
and then crop out where it's least eX-
pected. / knew of one case where a
party of shinglers left their hut one
morning and when they came back it
was gone and fourth of an acre with
it. If it had happened twelve hours
later they'd have gone in. In the Della
ware swamp you will find heaps of such
places and green hands when they 90
down there always think there has been
volcany, and so there has, after
fashion"
''The subject of underground
forests. " said my geological companion,
on our way back, ''is an interesting
one, and in the west there are some
strange sights to be seen. l remember
especially one locality about the head
waters of the Lithodendron River; there
are thousands of trees lying about, as if
some hurricane had swept over the spot
and leveled them to the ground, but in
every case the tree has turned to stone
| and the trunks now weigh tons where
they formerly could be tossed about bv
the wind. A miner that | met told me
that in one locality that he had visited
the trees were standing, and they came
to camp there. At first they did not
notice it, as it was late in the fall, when
all the leaves were off the trees, but he
sent darkey out to chop some wood.
and as the fellow struck tree the axe
glanced off and streams of fiery sparks
flew off in such numbers that he was
frightened half to death, and came
rushing into camp shouting that the
place was haunted. He finally went out
again, but was terrified by finding that
even the twigs that he picked up on the
ground were as heavy as lead; they had
all turned into stone. He described the
place as weird one, the great trunks
standing around here and there like
monuments, some of them being fifty or
sixty feet high. The two most famous
localities are at Fort Wingate, New
Mexico, and the Lithodendron, about
twenty miles from the Navajo Springs,
Arizona, From these localities fine
collection has been taken for the
National Museum at Washington.
"A detail was sent out under the
charge of Lieutenant j. T. G. Hegewald,
of the Fifteenth Infantry, and they
secured some magnificent specimens.
The Navajoes that were tending their
sheep in the vicinity believed the fallen
trunks to represent the bones of former
giants that their ancestors had killed,
and could not understand why the
Great Father at Washington should
want them. In this place they actually
covered the ground in some spots, the
trunks often being of great size. All
through the valley of the Lithodendron
they are found, thousands of tons lying
scattered along the slopes. The ma
jority were in pieces of twenty or ten
feet long, SO broken by changes of heat
and cold. Other trunks were intact;
one measured by the Lieutenant was
two hundred feet in length and nearly
five feet in diameter. the cores often
containing wonderful specimens of
quartz. The specimens were hauled to
Sana Fe. N. M, and there shipped East
by rail; but in wear or 90 not a sneci-