The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1924-10-30

going by. The cooling process wove
carpets and rugs and cracked and
turned them up on edge or formed
caves and cornu-copias and caverns
in billion chance shapes that make
limitless field of observation to
marvel at.
People are streaming to Europe
| now to see the work of war on the
battlefields, and especially to note
the results of bombardment with the
big Berthas and others. At this
new park is the Big Cinder crater at
$500 feet elevation and about seven
hundred feet above the level of the
plain. 1t has a cannon's mouth a
thousand feet across at the rim, and
points upward as if to fight the yep
pelins as they come over. The big
Berthas with 22-inch mouth when
fired made such terrific detonations
that it killed all human beings with
in mile. They had to be fired
electrically by men buried deep in
the earth or at a great distance.
They fired shots few miles into the
air. But the Big Cinder crater fired
bombs from the size of an oyster up
to enormous sizes, and there is evil
dence that gales were blowing some
of the time for the bombs lie in
greater numbers on the northeastern
side of the crater. Far out on the
plain are great masses shot into the
air while hot and soft, but cooled in
transit and only soft enough to dent
or flatten when they struck the
ground. The shocks and detona-
tions from firing these hundred ton
bombs constituted the fireworks in
the birth of a world, or the gradua-
ton of the world, for these flows and
shots are said by biologists to have
ben the final eruptions, the finishing
off in this part of the earth, and
dates are given as late as hundred
and fifty years ago. An eminent
geologist is quoted as saying the
river of lava was flowing at some |
such recent date or within a century |
or two.
The editor OF the Idaho Republi- |
can made an investigation of the age |
of trees growing along the shores of
the river and found one that was ten
inches in diameter and by its rings
when sawed off revealed it's age as
12O years, and it had been dead so
long it had lost it's bark and was
SulOOIu anu gray Will d6S. ALI
other one only a little larger had
about $50 annual rings. One that
had fallen down in natural dry de-
cay was four feet in diameter and
lad lain so long that it was honey
,ombed by dry decay and only a
mere shell remained of a once giant
rec. If it grew as slowly as those
We counted the rings on, it must
lave been at least five or six hundred
vears in growing, plus century or
wo decaying. 1t had stood so close
o the river that it's heat would have
burned every vestige of the trunk if
t had been there during the flow.
Many of the floats have trees on
hem, some standing on top like
nasts and others down at the edge
# the lava where they would have
,urned. We examined tree and
liant growth varying from twenty
ears up to $50 years by counting
he annual rings, and on the occa-
ion of our next trip will go pre-
AIRED to saw out sections or limbs
rom some of the giant trees and
cunt the rings with the aid of a
1agnifying glass to determine Just
ow recent the flow was not
There is urgent need of tighten
1g of the regulations there to keep |:
isitors from destroying specimens.
o remarkable and strange are they :.