The Opelousas courier., 1892-10-22
THE PETRlF[ED FOREST"
THE WONDERS OF CHALCEDoNY
PARK In ARIZONA.
Thousands of Mighty Trees Turned to
Solid Stone-Myriads of Precious
GemS-An Enchanted SuOt.

IT T G. HOVEY describes in the
II. s::i ::;:: a7 e. S:sn E :. ; 4 e r.; !;
start the road was lined by specimens of
.agatized wood. Now and thea a petri-
ned log, or solitary stump, were harbin-
gers of what was to be seen further on.
The term spark" is a misnomer; for
there is no natural park here, nor has
the hand of man done anything but to
-shatter the marvellous relics of dateless
antiquity. The people of the vicinity
always speak of it as ssthe Petrifed
Forest" But that again is misleading;
for there is no forest, whatever there NAV
have been fifty centuries ago. Tt GER
tainly seems as if the place ought to be
made a National park, and should be
both better protected and more easy of
access. AS it is, the enchanted sDot
lies at the mercy of vandals, the only
precaution against spoEation being a
railroad rule against shipping specimens
from it in bulk.
How shall the Chalk edony Park be
described At first one gets the i'm
preston that it is a small affair, of per-
,haps fifty acres. Then he says that it
must be a hundred. And after riding
over its amazing ruiz Is for many hours
in succession, he concludes that the area
includes a thousand : cres; and finally he
hardly questions the bold estimate of
Mr.. @. F. Lummls4 that TIE extensive
forest now hardenetainto stone formerly
covered s'hundreds of square miles,"
and accepts wlthourG dissent the assertion
of Mr. g. F. Kunz, that there may here
be seen at a glance q million tons of
precious stones. A matter of-fact
visitor might say that the scene reminded
him of a vast logging camp, where the
lnmbermen had tossed the huge logs
from their sleds at random, and then
had gone away, leaving them to1become
rain-soaked and moss-grown., The
trees when standing were fully two
hundred feet high; for even now their
PROSTATE trunks measure. when IN
broken, from one hundred to n hun
dred and fifty feet. The popularity
already limited at is that these mighty
trunks are as regularly severed into
sections as if the work had been done by
a cross-cut saw. The lengths vary from
disks like cart wheels to logs twenty or
thirty feet long, or longer. Twigs are
found an inch through, and trunks ten
feet thick. They lie at every angle;
parallel to each other, and at right
angles; singiy and in great groups; down
in gulleys and perched slike cannon ON
hill tops.
And all these smytiads of trunks,
stumps, logs, branches and tiny twigs
are solid stone. And.on inspection they
prove to be prec;ou gems Of almost every
known variety. tt pse that remain in
tact have been weat aered to a dark red,
rich brown, or sober black. But Times
relentless ak, aided by the biologists
hammer, has made havoc with so many
of them that the gnand is thickly strewn
with their fragmen ts, from rocks like
powders down to chips and minute
splinteIs, that show their brilliant colors
under the fierce Arizona sun with
kaleidoscope effect. At every football
you tread on gems, some of which might
grace a ducal coronet, while the most
plain and least attractive would be worthy
of an honored place in the finest cabinet.
There are 10 rlbies, sapphires nor
diamonds here Gas. has been incorrectly
reported), but the amethyst abounds,
and the red and yellow jasper, chalce..
dony of every hue, the topaz, the onyx,
the carnelian, and every imaginable
variety of agate. Nor log, o frag-
ment, is limited to a single kind of gem.
Many are massive mosaics of all the
kinds named above. The material breaks
pretty easily into cubical forms, but it is
extremely hard, and takes a brilliant and
durable polish. i