156 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



* 



phur on the objects which come within its range. "The 

 Devil's Punch-Bowl," called also "The Witches' Cauldron," is 

 in a large hole, six feet across, in the hill-side. The liquid in 

 the bowl is black and thick, and is always in commotion with 

 the heat, and the vapor from it deposits black flowers of sul- 

 phur on the rocks around. The sides of the canon are bare, 

 and smoking with heat. The Geysers are a favorite place of 

 resort for pleasure-seekers, being conveniently accessible, part of 

 the route from San Francisco going through either Napa, 

 Petaluma, or Russian Valleys by rail, and the remainder by 

 stage over a romantic wagon road. 



113. Petrified Forest. Five miles west of Calistoga, in 

 the ridge which separates Napa from Santa Rosa, are a score 

 of petrified tree- trunks, lying down, and these have been called 

 the " Petrified Forest," a name which might mislead persons 

 to imagine that the number of petrified trees was large, and 

 that they were standing erect. They are scattered over an 

 area five hundred yards square s and others are found at inter- 

 vals, on the ridge, down nearly to the bay, a distance of twen- 

 ty-five miles. The largest is five feet in diameter and about fif- 

 teen feet long, with nothing to indicate what became of the 

 remainder of the tree. No branches have been found, nor 

 more than twenty feet of the trunk of any one tree. The 

 smallest trunk is over a foot in diameter, and most of them 

 over two feet, but many fragments are found, broken from 

 trunks of unknown size. The petrifaction is complete. The 

 woody fiber has entirely disappeared, and has been replaced by 

 a grayish stone that seems to be mainly carbonate of lime, in 

 which the grain of the timber is distinctly preserved. The pet- 

 rifactions split readily with the grain, and the numerous splin- 

 ters lying about resemble wood rather than stone, until they 

 are picked up. 



All the stone trunks are broken across transversely, some of 

 them in pieces not more than a foot long, on an average, with 

 a squarenesss of fracture suggesting that after petrifaction 



