Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-04-04

and softly tinted wood seems frozen
into a lasting picture by the patient
hand of time
You can get one of these slabs for
from so to 800. l bought one of the
latter to hold the door open in my new
, and costly villa at Buck Shoals, n. C.
Some of these slabs are two feet across,
and none of them seems to represent
any kind of tree existing at the present
time. They afford, therefore, a wonder
full field for the active mind to stroll
about in. Perhaps over this beautiful
alb, while yet it was in the heart of
saplirg, some belated pterodactyl
! sprawle0 on his way to his damp home.
Possibly the icthyosaurus crawled out
of hole in this tree on grounding day.
Who can tell what has happened in
the early history of this petrified forest?
Nobody can. Away back yonder in the
misty past, long before the climate got
so that the hired girl could bear her
| hand in it, while yet the hot mud boiled
with the mighty heat of new laid
world and the air was filed with dis
| agreeable odors, and the evening and
the morning indicated that workmen on
| the foundation of the earth had blown
out the gas at night, and the angels
went about over the face of the earth
flying high and holding their noses, this
tree was 5prouting.
Those, fellow citizens, were times
when the country was new. Those were
days when the hot mist from the seeth-
ing earth came back at once as warm
rain, only to be Immediately utilized as
mist again; when mammoth forests, like
gigantic asparagus beds, sprang forth
in few months and overshadowed the
silent and Shiny home of the saurian
monster.
1t was under those circumstances, we
are told by old settlers whose memory
Is yet good, that these early forests
| grew. Then Nature, with long, rainy
day on her hands, one time decided that
she would try preserving a forest for
future use. Thus we have here, sur
rounded by electric lights and high
livers in society, along with the tele-
phone and artificial ice, slab of wood
whose bark has been abraded here
and there where the icthyosaurus has
scratched his warty back against it in
the mellow millions of years that left
no other history.
Becoming somewhat excited over this
great thought, bought another beauti-
full $3.50 specimen to pound steak on.
| We may not always have steak at our
| house, but we propose to have some
thing to pound it on whenever we do
have steak.
The railroad agent at Billings, A. T.,
near where this petriied forest is stu
ated, gets thirteen to seventeen letters
| per week from people who want speci-
mems of this petrifed wood Here is
| one:
! Station Agent, Billings, \. T.:
DEAR SIR--AIay | ask you to write me re-
| garding INA tural Curiosity" the petrified for
| est of Arizona? Is it a fact. and how large an
/ area does it cover? l would be pleased to have
| you send by express some specimens of red
moss agate, amethyst and smoky topaz.
would love to visit this place if the article in
| St. Nicholas is true. Yours truly,
l. D. CLARE.
This name is not the correct one, but
little conceit of my own. The agent
has many of these letters, and wishes
me to put piece in the paper begging
the public not to write to him any more
regarding this matter, as it is breaking
him down. He says that elderly maiden
ladies, VINO brought the war to a speedy
close by making prune pie for the SOL
diers, now write to him for agates, for
getting that he is getting forty dollars
per month from the railroad, not spe-
cially for tie purpose of gathering moss
agates or petrifed trees for others.
Sometimes he is not sure that the
freight will be paid or he would be more
prompt to send things. Sometimes an
unknown man who cannot spell, to say
nothing of paying the freight, orders a
quart of In1ian arrowheads and 1000
| feet of petr fed lumber to build house
of. This bothers the agent, who is also
telegraph operator, line repairer, ticket
and baggage agent and the head of q
family. He wishes to notify the public
by this mes ms that hereafter it will be
impossible for him to supply petrified
sills for those who are building in Ohio,
especially as the petyified forest is owned