Some
trees, now growing, are partly petrified. This is a startling fact for
natural philosophers, and must cause them to modify the existing
theory of petrification.- Kennedy.
This account, at first discredited, has since been corroborated by
the discovery of a completely petrified forest, near the head waters
of the Cheyenne, or Chienne river, which has its source in the Black
Hills of the rocky chain.
There is scarcely, perhaps, a spectacle on the surface of the
globe more remarkable, either in a geological or picturesque point
of view than that presented by the petrified forest, near Cairo. The
traveller, having passed the tombs of the caliphs, just beyond the
gates of the city, proceeds to the southward, nearly at right angles
to the road across the desert to Suez, and after having travelled some
ten miles up a low barren valley, covered with sand, gravel, and sea
shells, fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday, crosses a
low range of sandhills, which has for some distance run parallel to
his path. The scene now presented to him is beyond conception singular
and desolate.
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