204 THE MEDALS OF CREATION. Cuar. VL 
“ Having passed the tombs of the Caliphs, just beyond the 
gates of Cairo, we proceed to the southward nearly at right 
angles to the road, across the Desert to Suez: and after 
travelling some ten miles up a low barren valley covered with 
sand, gravel, and sea-shells, fresh as if the tide had retired 
but yesterday, we cross a low range of sand-hills, which has 
for some distance run parallel to our path. The scene now 
presented is beyond conception singular and desolate. Heaps 
of fragments of large trees converted into stone every where 
meet the eye, and when struck by our horses’ hoofs rang like 
cast iron ; they extend for miles in the form of a decayed and 
prostrate forest ; and the appearance is so natural, that were 
it in Scotland or Ireland, it would pass without remark as a 
drained bog, on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the 
sun. The roots, and rudiments of the branches, are in many 
cases nearly perfect, and in some the worm-holes eaten under 
the bark are distinctly recognizable.” * 
Many of the trunks are scattered over the surface, among 
rolled and angular fragments of dark grit, and pebbles of 
Jasper,t chert, and quartz. The large trunks occur in great 
numbers on dark-coloured knolls, where they lie, like the 
broken stems of a prostrate forest, crossing each other at 
various angles. Two of the largest measured respectively 
forty-eight, and sixty feet in length, and two and a half, and — 
three feet in diameter, at the base. With but two or three 
exceptions, all the specimens examined microscopically, are 
dicotyledons. No traces of seed-vessels or leaves have been 
detected. 
The situation and condition of these petrified forests, indi- 
cate great changes in the relative position of the land and sea 
in that part of Egypt ; for the trees must have grown on the 
dry land formed by the elevated bottom of a former ocean ; 
which must have subsided, and been covered by beds of sand 
* Bombay Times. 
7 The jaspers are known to lapidaries as Egyptian Pebbles. 
