TO THE COURT OF AVA. 
93 
are often accurately preserved. All these spe¬ 
cimens of petrified wood were more or less im¬ 
pregnated with iron. The most curious petri¬ 
faction, however, which we met, was obtained 
by Dr. Wallich—a fossil bone, which, from its 
appearance, we judged at the time to be the 
lower part of the femur, or thigh-bone, of an 
elephant. The cells of the bone, like the fibre 
in the wood, was accurately preserved. 
At three in the afternoon, our whole party 
proceeded to the celebrated Petroleum Wells. 
Those which we visited cannot be farther than 
three miles from the village, for we walked to 
them in forty minutes. The cart-road which 
leads to them is tolerably good, at least for a 
foot traveller. The wells occupy altogether a 
space of about sixteen square miles. The coun¬ 
try here is a series of sand-hills and ravines,— 
the latter, torrents after a fall of rain, as we 
now experienced, and the former either covered 
with a very thin soil, or altogether bare. The 
trees, which were rather more numerous than 
we looked for, did not rise beyond twenty feet 
in height. The surface gave no indication that 
we could detect of the existence of the petro¬ 
leum. On the spot which we reached, there 
were eight or ten wells, and we examined one 
of the best. The shaft was of a square form, 
