Prickly Pear, Yearbook of Abilene Christian College, 1916 Page: 96
[120] : ill. ; 21 cm.View a full description of this yearbook.
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A Forest Gone to Bed
MRS. E. K. WETZEL.
In the bleak desert of Arizona we have of all the Southwestern or they would show the
Wonderland-the most concentrated area on earth of earth's greatest or they would be simile
natural marvels-the Petrified Forest is the most puzzling. One derly their heads gen
guess may be as good as another. The greatest geologists, the greatest
botanits have bumped their heads gainst it in vain. Even Muir, one at c
the very brother of the trees has to keep silent. It is the prime quake of the first dim(
mystery in geology-the hardest nut, and the hardest wood in the tinent southerly.
world.
Anyhow, these trees
It is truly God's acre, but lacking the shrouds, for the ancient nial gems after they
trees live again in the adamant and agate of every conceivable color. by later shocks of fros
4 On approaching this stone forest, one is quickly attracted by stray tree is measurable up
bits of petrified wood that glisten like jewels by the road side. One in one piece. The fra(
soon espies larger and larger blocks, then trunks of trees, then whole place during the fossilJ
trees, some more than two hundred feet long, lying just as they
were bared by the action of the element. There seems to be no In these deep bowel
limit to the deposit-literally thousands of acres, millions of tons. per, salt; the paste
*NE, Let no one expect to see the trees standing upright. They are rumbled; and the pre
prone upon the ground, in a vast chasm, which was once the bed nought as an elephant
of an ancient sea. Many of these stone trees are partly covered waters into every fibr
with earth, but retain their bark, sometimes even the heart and the slowly-the pressure i
cross-sections plainly show how old they are. sist. Else we should
gic book as flat as we
What race of man knew the living forest; what birds sang in its c book as flat as we
swaying boughs. what creatures browsed beneath its protecting And then what we
arms; what shock of earth brought low those monarchs, stately this vast sunken water
pines and giant oaks? -A thousand questions press in upon the tour- light by an upheavel s
ist as he views these relics of another age. tary blanket of a sleep
Something lays this forest low-"maybe a cyclone, maybe a And the forgotten
freshet, maybe a submergence." We have no data beyond the fact of again, then huddled u:
the recumbent giant. All that it sure is that they fell where they Even now it is a mile
stood-and are there a million years later. They have not drifted Gradually the moth
or shifted, either under the immemorial ocean or under the inland blanket by blanket train
sea whose shores are still marked on the peaks and rims of the in the far Pacific wil
Mogollon Plateau-a little lake about 300 by 200 miles. It was un- Strata by the thousan
questionably a warm sea. The hundreds of volcanic cones, the tooth. And in the full]
mineral springs that still persists, show that there was a collossal to the sunlight where
pickling plant. mortal air in the same
Prostrated in full vigor by some resistless force-not a cyclone, eys today.
c__sii4N___tangled windfall; not an avalanche of water,
arly huddled-these great trees laid down orerally
to the South. We can conceive of but
ave moved them down so evenly-an earthensions
traveling from the Clrest of the Conwent
down. They were embalmed to perenfell.
They were cross-cut and dismembered
t. Even when the full stature of the 200 foot
on the ground it is rare to find twenty feet
cture is an almost perfect cross-cut, and took
ization of the trunks.
ls of the earth the spring of sulphur, iron, copof
chalcedony, the solutions of silica still
ssure that would break the rib of a Dreadmight
efface a gnat, injected these mineral
re of the one time wood. Of course it went
increasing only as the trunk hardened to rehave
nine foot trees "pressed" in the geolopress
a flower in the family Bible.
are pleased to call the Tertuary Age: when
er logged continents to God s forgotten suno
balanced that it did not ruffle the sedimening
world.
forest came up to the top of the continent
nder a mile or so of cretaceous counterpane.
above sea level.
i of geology began to eat the bedclothes, and
veled away by grains of sand to be submerged
th the embryo of continents yet unguessed.
tdq were devoured away by slow implacable
nesa of the age the immortal forest came back
once its myriad leaves danced and breathed a
fierce Arizona sun under which it dazzles our(IA
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Abilene Christian College. Prickly Pear, Yearbook of Abilene Christian College, 1916, yearbook, 1916; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39971/m1/96/?rotate=90: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.