Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/376

364 depth. Over the entire area the trees lie scattered in all conceivable positions and in fragments of all sizes, sometimes resembling a pile of cart-wheels. A tree one hundred and fifty feet in length is often found broken up into as many sections of almost uniform length, presenting the appearance of having been sawed asunder for shingle-block by some prehistoric forester.

Again, we find a giant tree broken into countless fragments, ranging in size from a small pebble to a fair-sized bowlder. Perfect-shaped cubes, ready to be polished and used for paper-weights, are also found. These multiplied fractures are the result of alternate heat and cold acting on the water collected in the fissures of the tree.

The highest point in the park is some two hundred feet above the surrounding level, and it is here that the buried trees can be seen to the best advantage. Some of them are one hundred and fifty feet long and ten feet in diameter, and lie exposed in all conceivable positions. One section of a tree, which has been broken up, measures eight feet in diameter, ten feet in length, and weighs several tons. The tree was originally about two hundred feet long. Some pieces of the trunks of these trees, which were brought to New York, ranged from eight inches to three feet in diameter, and from twenty-five to one thousand pounds in weight. The perfect preservation of these trunks is remarkable. The rings are so distinctly visible as to convince even the most incredulous of their organic origin.

The most interesting points in the park have been suggestively named. The Agate or Natural Bridge, Agate Gulch, Amethyst Point, Fort Jasper, etc.

The most remarkable feature of the park, and a phenomenon perhaps unparalleled, is the Natural Bridge, of agatized wood, formed by a tree, spanning a canon forty-five feet in depth and fifty-five in width. In addition to the span, fully fifty feet of the tree rests on one Bide, making the tree visible for a length of over one hundred feet. Both ends of the tree are imbedded in the sandstone. It averages three and a half feet in diameter, four feet at the thickest part, and three at the smallest. Where the bark does not adhere, the characteristic colors of jasper and agate are to be seen.

Although silicified wood is found in many localities throughout the world, nowhere is it so beautifully colored as at this place. Here we have every imaginable shade of red, yellow, brown, and green. Sometimes the colors appear in distinct spots, forming a mottled appearance; then, again, all blend so imperceptibly as to make a much more pleasing and harmonious effect than the decided banding of the agate, where the lines of demarkation between the colors are so distinct as to become obtrusive. The colors above mentioned are often relieved by white, black, and gray, and by transparent spaces of brilliant quartz crystals, or—as sometimes occurs—of amethyst.

Broken sections of the hollow trunks are often lined with amethyst.