ystallization has transformed the wood of these old,
old trees into the brilliant fragments we can have for the
carrying--"beautiful wood replaced by beautiful stone," as Mr. Muir was
fond of saying.

With what wonder and incredulity we roamed about witnessing the strange
spectacle!--the prostrate monarchs with hearts of jasper and chalcedony,
now silent and rigid in this desolate region where they basked in the
sunlight and swayed in the winds millions of years ago. Only a small
part of the old forest is as yet exposed; these trees, buried for ages
beneath the early seas, becoming petrified as they lay, are, after ages
more, gradually being unearthed as the softer parts of the soil covering
them wears away.

The scenic aspects of the place, the powerful appeal it made to the
imagination, the evidences of infinite time, the wonderful metamorphosis
from vegetable life to these petrified remains which copy so faithfully
the form and structure of the living trees, were powerfully enhanced by
the sight of these two men wandering amid these ruins of Carboniferous
time, sometimes in earnest conversation, oftener in silence; again in
serious question from the one and perhaps bantering answer from the
other; for although Mr. Burroughs was intensely interested in this
spectacle, and full of cogitations and questions as to the cause and
explanation of it all, Mr. Muir was not disposed to treat questions
seriously.

"Oh, get a primer of geology, Johnnie," he would say when the earnest
Eastern student would ask for a solution of some of the puzzles arising
in his mind--a perversity that was especially annoying, since the Scot
had carefully explored these regions, and was doubtless well equipped to
adduce reasonable explanations had he been so minded. That very forest
to which we went on that first day, and where we ate our luncheon from
the trunk of a great petrified Sigillaria, had been discovered by Mr.
Muir and his daughter a few years before as they were riding over the
sandy plateau. He told us how excited he was that night--he could not
sleep, but lay awake trying to restore the living forest in imagination,
for, from the petrified remains, he could tell to what order these
giants belonged.

When others congregate to eat, the Scot seems specially impelled to
talk. With a fine disregard for food, he sat and crumbled dry bread,
occasionally putting a bit in his mouth, talking while the eating
was going on. He is likewise i