Evening star., 1939-05-13
Of Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

GREAT BEND STATE PARK, Tex,
May 13-Stone giants with human faces
sprawl in million-year-long slumber on
the ridged mountain tops that look down
on deep valleys in great natures won-
derland enfolded in the great bend of
the Rio Grande River.
1t is one of the ghostly spots of the
world, arising out of hundreds of square
miles of almost barren desert baked in
the May sun into chasm- m-broken glades
5000 feet in elevation filled with the
everlasting blowing of cold winds. This
region almost unknown to the world,
but recently set aside by Texas as a
park and now proposed as a national
park impressed astronomers attending
the dedication of the worlds second
largest telescope $50 miles away as
roughly comparable to the landscape of
the moon.
1t is an ancient volcanic region
churned by earth cataclysms through
| almost countless centuries. 1t has been
under the sea in the days when monster
cephalopods, ancient relatives of the
chambered nautilus and of the octopus,
were the dominant creatures of the world
and clans four feet in diameter lay
buried in the beach sands. There were
great marshes there 10Oo0OOO0 years
ago in which walloWed monster dino
saurs whose leg bones are being collected
by Texas geologsts
Stretching away from it is as moonlike
land as one could see on earth nearly
lifeless scared by thousands of years
of summer storms which some time in
the last Ice Age was great fresh-Water
lake surrounded by lush vegetation
through which crashed herds of extinct
elephants. The story of the millions of
years of life in the Big Bend region still
remains largely to be hammered out of
the hard rocks by the geologsts
The Chisos CGhosD Mountains was
the name given this region by the Span
ish. One can appreciate the sensation of
eeriness which must have afflicted the
lone horsemen riding into this region
with the weird voices of the winds issu-
ing from score of throats, the deep
mountain chasms, into the valleys. But
most OF all the ghostly atmosphere is de-
| rived from the great stone faces of the
sleeping giants. Hitherto this feature of
the region has attracted little attention
Like other human features in rock
carved by frosts, winds and rains
through centuries these exist partly in
reality and partly in the imaginations.o of
the Sight-seers. But seen from a dis
tance they seem completely to surround
some of the glens. the giants lying head
to foot as if asleep. 1t is curious mix
| ture.
The most conspicuous and realistic of
all, commented upon by several of the
visiting scientists, is sleeping face of
Abraham Lincoln. The likeness, espe-
cially when seen from certain angles
and with the right light, is striking The
gaunt lines of the Civil War Presidents
| face seem to have been reproduced in
! rough relief by natures sculptors, and
| human mountain carvers with electric
drills hardly could have done much
better
| Lincoln is asleep, his eyes closed In
the sun. The face is at least 500 feet in
| length, giving an idea of the great scale
of this sculpturlng, yet the features are
not much out of proportion. At Lin
coins feet is another gigantic but equally
we'll proportioned face with the sun
shining on the closed eyes. The head is
hooded and the features have an Orien-
tai aspect. Some said the face looked
like that of King Tut-Ankh Amen.
Others thought it might have been a
statue OF Pocahontas. Besides there are
faces of Dopey the Dwarf and of gro
tesque barely human ogres
Admittedly the imagination plavs a
part, but all are as good great stone
faces as one is likely to find anywhere
and very likely inspired the Spaniards
in naming the mountains. In the valleys
themselves they are hardly discernible
but stand out boldly from the perspective
of the moon-surfaced ancient lake bot
tom.
The region is extremely isolated at
present and almost waterless. Recently
a fairly good dirt road has been con-
structed for a hundred miles from the
nearest railroad town, and all along this
road the only evidences of human habi-
tation are some tiny gas stations. Part
of the region lies across the Rio Grande
In Mexico and one of the proposals is to
turn the whole into the first interna-
tional park
Aside from its eeriness and scenic
grandeur the region is of considerable
interest to botanists. Here blossom
flaming red cactuses and tall yucca stalks
are covered with white bells swinging in
the wind. Here is the only spot on earth
where one finds the weeping juniper with
Its green foliage turned downward. The
mountalnsideS and the chasms which
split them, leading into mysterious
depths, are thinly wooded with scrub oak
and sagebrush and pine. The land is
Waterless except for great torrents which
sweep thunderously through these
chasms after heavy summer rains Only
occasional goats browse on these noun
tainsides and rattlesnakes lurk treach-
erously under the sun-baked rocks
The weird features become especially
impressive when the white face of the
moon looks down on its earthly counter
part, when one might imagine the eyes
OF the sleeping giants open for a brief
tfn l.