A MOUNTAIN OF GLASS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 11024, 15 September 1897, Page 2

A MOUNTAIN OF GLASS.

What the Revue Encyclopedique calls the eighth wonder of tha world has been discovered in the County of Wyoming, in the State of Pennsylvania. With that charming ignorance of American geography for which even well educated Frenchmen are so justly distinguished, the Parisian writer raises the picturesque valley of the Susquehaana, in which Campbell laid the scene of one of his best poems, to the dignity of a State; but perhaps, the people of Wyoming will be disposed to rest content with the possession of a natural wonder, upon which they are sure to pride themselves as muah as if it were a work of their own creation This is no other than a rock of glass 800 yds long and 60yds high, and presenting the appearance of a colos f>al wall, which is occasionally as much as 40yds thick. It is very dark in places, and the southern extremity of the mass rests upon a succession of prismatic pillars 18yds high and about lyd in circumference. Thes«> columns are described as being as black as jet, while the vitreous rock itself is streaked with veins of a similar substance, red, browD, and green in color, and resembling the markings of a dark marble. According to the concurrent statements of the various geologists who have visited and examined this remarkable phenomenon, it is of volcanic origin, and results from tho fusion and flux, at a vory high temperature, of the olements of which the ordinary glass of commerce is composed. In all probability, however, it is a mass of hyaline obsidian, such as is often thrown up by tho volcanoes of ilesiro and Iceland, and was well known to tho ancient Peruvians, by whom it was employed for the same pornoses as the greenstone of the New Zealand Maoris When the sun is shining on the rock in AVyoming it has all tho appaaranee of a huge biack diamond, and it is believed to have been ejected from the bowels of the earth in a fluid condition many thousands of years ago.