A FOREST OF GEMS

Otago Witness, Issue 3525, 4 October 1921, Page 26

A FOREST OF GEMS

Among the many wonders of the far South-West of America, the Petrified Forest of Arizona must ever take high rank. On the maps it is called Chalcedony Park, but the people of Arizona always speak of it as the “Petrified Forest” (says Popular Science Siftings). Neither name is very descriptive. It is not a forest, and it is not a park; nor are the trees petrified, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Almost everyone has seen specimens of common petrified wood. Tho wood of Chalcedony Park bears very little resemblance to this; for. instead of having been changed into ordinary stone, it has been agatised. The Petrified Forest—if a wilderness of prostrate tree-trunks may by any allowable figure of speech be called a forest —lies in a region of desolation, of sage bush, drifting sand, alkal_i wastes, and lava. All about bare rocks blister under the fierce Arizona sun. The lake-like illusions of a desert country are to he seen, and mirage expanses, in which distant hills and stony buttes seem to waver and swim as _if upborne on a misty, restless sea? It is probable that the forest once covered hundreds of square miles, for agatised trunks, logs, and bits of wood are found throughout a great radius of country. It occupies now about a thousand acres. None of the trees is standing. Very few remain intact. They have been broken into log-like lengths, broken short off, so that the forest resembles a vast logging camp with the logs scattered about ready for hauling. The lengths vary from discs like cart-wheels to logs 20ft and 30ft long. Many of the trees, when standing, were fully 200 ft in height. Trunks may be seen that are 10ft in diameter, and there are also little twigs no thicker than one’s thumb. They lie in every position, and at every conceivable angle. Some are in groups and others alone. They are on the tops of the ridges and down in the hollows in fact, everywhere throughout the forest’s whole extent. And the strangest thing about them is that every one is composed of semi-precious stones. There are literally millions and millions of amethysts; and there is chalcedony of every hue, red and yellow, jasper, topaz, carnelian, onyx, and every imaginable variety of agate. Singular as it may seem, no log is limited to a single kind of stone. It may be in it all of the above ; in fact, every log is a mosaic of brilliant geins, more beautiful than any mosaic ever formed by human hands. There are no true precious stones to be found in Chalcedony Parkno diamonds, rubies, or sapphires, but the chips and bits of wood covering the ground are as brilliant and shining as if they were really precious gems, and the specimen hunter is bewildered by tlie rich display.