GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 15 



my surprise found that the logs were stone. Never else- 

 where have I seen petrifactions so large or so perfect. 

 One huge trunk of a pine-tree was about six feet in 

 diameter and ten or twelve feet long. It was hollow, and 

 a portion of the hollow part had been burned away. The 

 bark, the wood, the hollow, the marks of fire, were all 

 perfectly natural, yet the log was solid stone. Many 

 other trunks, branches, and broken portions were lying 

 about or heaped in a sort of dam across the ravine, which 

 even if full of water could scarcely have floated away the 

 smallest of them as wood. One broken piece of heart- 

 pine was as perfect as if just split from the log, with the 

 ' fat yellow ' resin exuding between the layers ; but all was 

 stone. The place where these now lie is on what I 

 designate as the ' second plain.' a high, and here nearly 

 level, tableland. At this time I doubt if there is a grow- 

 ing pine-tree within fifty miles of the spot, and I have 

 never seen growing, in the most protected canon of the 

 Eocky Mountains, so large a pine-trunk as this petrifac- 

 tion. The process of petrifaction seems in many cases to 

 be inexplicable. Once marching with a command near the 

 Medicine Bow Creek, I was searching for a crossing over\ 

 a deep and difficult ravine for my waggons, when I came 

 to a stump of a pine-tree about two feet high and twelve 

 inches in diameter. About it were lying large chips such as 

 none but an experienced axeman and a good axe take 

 from trees in felling ; something attracted my close atten- 

 tion to the stump, which I found to be of stone. On dis- 

 mounting and picking up the chips, I found that they alsox 

 were stone. This tree had undoubtedly been cut down 

 by a white man, probably since the exodus of the 

 Mormons. The petrifaction of the stump is easily ac- 

 counted for ; but how account for the conversion to stone 

 of the scattered chips, lying on the hard dry surface of the 

 ground away from moisture ! I filled my saddle-pockets 

 with these chips, and subsequently distributed them among 

 friends, scientific or otherwise. I have recently learned 



