The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific

CHAPTER IX

Lilian Whiting

THE PETRIFIED FOREST AND THE METEORITE MOUNTAIN

"A spell is laid on sod and stone,

Night and day are tampered with.

Every quality and pith

Surcharged and sultry with a power

That works its will on age and hour."

Emerson

A June day in the Petrified Forests of Arizona is an experience that can never fade from memory. Every excursion into this strange, uncanny realm of Arizona, which is an empire in its area; every journey one takes, every trail he follows, leads into strange and fascinating locality; and Adamana, the gateway to the Petrified Forests, has its own spellbinding power for the tourist. Adamana consists of a water tank, the station, and two bungalows, in one of which very comfortable entertainment is offered, and in the other of which dwells a character whom all travellers meet,—Adam Hanna, a distant relative of the late Mark Hanna, the original settler of this region. For a long time the place was known as Adam Hanna's, and when with advancing civilization this designation became too colloquial for an up-to-date twentieth-century world, the elision of two or three letters gave the present attractive name,—Adamana.

To leave the comfortable ease of a Pullman sleeper at the witching hour of five in the morning to stop over at Adamana and visit the Petrified Forest requires a degree of fortitude beyond that usually calculated. Left to one's self, one would emulate the example of the man who journeyed to the north pole to see a sunrise that occurred only three days in the year. On the first two mornings he refused to rise on the plea of the further extension of his opportunities; on the third, when his servant reminded him that it was the "last call," he turned over and philosophically remarked that he would come again next year. But the dusky porter allows the tourist no such margin for reflection, and one finds himself standing in some wonderful place spellbound by the witchery of the desert, and the long train vanishing in the distance, almost before he knows whether he has exchanged the land of dreams for the land of day and daylight realities,—for this weird and mystic panorama of the infinite desert, with the bluest of turquoise skies already lighted by the blazing splendor of the June sunrise, and the grotesque, uncanny buttes scattered at intervals all over that vast plain. The intense silence was unbroken save by the voice and footstep of the man representing the little bungalow termed the Forest Hotel. Contrary to one's preconceived ideas of an Arizona desert, the morning was cold, and the blazing fire and hot coffee were most grateful. But where was the "Petrified Forest"? one marvelled. Away on the horizon gleamed an evanescent, palpitating region of shimmering color. Yet this was not the "quarry of jewels," but the "Bad Lands," which have at least one redeeming virtue, whatever their vices,—that of producing the most aËrial and fairy-like color effects imaginable.

It is astonishing how swiftly one relinquishes preconceived ideas of living and learns to get on without electric bells, long-distance telephones, and elaborate conveniences in general, even to the "prepared air," strained through thin layers of cloth, as the latest superfine condition added to a great New York hotel, and adapts one's self to a mode of life in which a simple but very clean room, primitive food, wonderful air, good, kind people, and a petrified forest to amuse him, take the place of the complex and elaborate life of the great Eastern cities. At Adamana one finds himself seventy-five miles from Gallup, New Mexico, the nearest town of any importance, from which all household supplies must be ordered. When the coffee gives out, for instance, seventy-five miles from a lemon; and when a Sunday and a holiday have almost followed each other, thus delaying all orders, one has then the most delightful and spacious opportunities for experimenting on the simple life. The desert offers other things; and while these do not include the menu of Sherry's, for instance, they do include certain allurements for which the country might be searched in vain, as they only exist on the Colorado desert. The quality of the air, the color of the sky, the marvel of color vistas,—all make up a new world in which one finds himself fairly questioning regarding his own identity. Nor has he any apparent test by which to determine—

"If I am I, as I do hope I be."

Perhaps, indeed, he does not so tenaciously cling to that which he remembers of himself yesterday, and is rather interested, on the whole, in accepting some possibly new transformation of his being. The locality seems to him sufficiently well indicated as being, according to his first impression, simply somewhere in the magic and witchery of space. This address might not be accepted by the government postal service, but even that heretofore indispensable matter in some way fades into comparative insignificance. What does one who has an Arizona sky, and a bewildering shimmer of color afar on the horizon that might be

"A painted ship upon a painted ocean"

or almost anything else,—what does he want of the sublunary detail of eight postal deliveries a day, beginning at half-past seven in the morning, with his first dawn of returning consciousness, and ending with midnight, when he is, very likely, summoned out of his sleep by the rap of a bellboy delivering more mail,—more,—as if he had not been under an avalanche of it all day and had sought refuge in dreamland for the very purpose of escaping the vigilance of his national postal service. But one may as well accept the fact as one from which there is no appeal, that in the heart of civilization he cannot escape its burdens and its penalties. He can only evade them by going to—Adamana, for instance; Adamana, the metropolis of the railroad water-tank, the station, and two bungalows. Even these are too many. One bungalow is enough. He cannot repose in two at the same time; and as for neighbors and news,—has he not the stars and the sunsets? What does Emily Dickinson say?—

"The only news I know

Is bulletins all day

From Immortality."

There are no birds to

"... carol undeceiving things,"

as in Colorado; but there is, instead, intense silence,—a silence so absolutely intense as to be, by a paradox, fairly vocal; and if one does but catch the music of the spheres for which he finds himself listening, it must be that his powers of hearing are defective. One recalls the lines:

"Who loves the music of the spheres

And lives on earth, must close his ears

To many voices that he hears."

The "many voices" are stilled; one has left them at least seventy-five miles away,—in Gallup, for instance! Gallup, that for the time prefigures itself to him as his New York, his Paris, his London. It is the source of all his possible supplies; and that it does not assume an overwhelming importance is simply because he does not want any supplies of the particular nature that Gallup—or Paris—can furnish. He has achieved something more than the power to satisfy all his (former) multitudinous wants; he has eliminated them.

To be sure, the Chinese have a proverb that it is not worth while to cut off one's feet to save buying shoes. Yet, if instead of depriving himself of feet he has achieved wings, why, manifestly, there is no need of shoes. There are, when one comes to think of it, a vast number of things in our late civilization for which there is no special need.

"For a cap and bells our lives we pay;

Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:

'Tis heaven alone that is given away;

'Tis only God may be had for the asking."

In fact, when one comes to reflect upon the aspects of his former life (as he sees them in mental panorama from Adamana), he can only arrive at the conclusion that life is unnecessarily choked and submerged under an ever-increasing burden of things. Emerson, of course, whose insight saw the universe as a crystal sphere which revealed to his vision its entire working mechanism,—Emerson long since announced that

"Things are in the saddle

And ride mankind."

Why should one be ridden by things? Why should he enslave himself,—mortgage his entire powers of achievement, such as they are, to pay his bills to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker? Is not the life more than meat, and the spirit than fine raiment? So he may dream for the moment, gazing meditatively at the water-tank, the station, and the two bungalows that comprise Adamana. Good for that day only, at least, is its contrast to the bewildering din of entrepÔts, of ports, of custom-houses, of the general din and warfare of the world he has left behind.

SAN FRANCISCO PEAK, NEAR FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA

Holbrook, the other station for the Petrified Forests, is twenty miles away. Flagstaff, a very thriving and interesting Arizona town, famous as the site of the Observatory of Prof. Percival Lowell of Boston, is one hundred and fifty miles to the west; and one hour of railroad journey beyond Flagstaff is Williams, the town from which runs the branch railroad to the Grand CaÑon over the rolling mesas crowned with the beautiful peaks of the San Francisco mountains, a distance of sixty-three miles, the journey occupying three hours. The nearest town to Adamana station, in which a daily paper is published, is Albuquerque, in New Mexico, which is nine hundred and thirty-five miles to the east, almost as far as from New York to Chicago. The metropolis to which this region looks as its nearest large city is Los Angeles, twenty-six hours distant. So here one is out of the world, so to speak,—

"The world forgetting, by the world forgot,"—

with the vast rolling mesas, with sandstone cliffs offering an uncanny landscape before the eye, with the eternal blue of Arizona skies bending above, with a silence so deep brooding over the desert that one might well feel himself on the moon rather than on earth,—a silence only broken by the semi-daily rush of the long overland trains and occasional freight lines that pass.

John Muir, the famous California naturalist, explorer, and author of valuable books on the Western parks, passed the winter of 1905-06 at Adamana with his two daughters, the Misses Wanda and Helen Muir, and it is he who has discovered the new Petrified Forest which he calls the "Blue Forest"—all the specimens having a deep blue tone, while the other three are simply quarries of red moss, agate, amethyst, topaz, pale rose crystals gleaming against a smoky green ground. The landscape effect of the "Bad Lands" from the little bungalow known as the Forest Hotel is of fairy-like enchantment. A shimmer of rose and gray and gold and emerald, it gleams on the horizon. Lighted by a blazing sunset, it might well be the gates of a New Jerusalem. Anything more exquisite, and more ineffably ethereal in coloring, one might journey far to seek.

"Moreover, something is, or seems,

That touches us like mystic gleams,

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams."

These lines may, perchance, come echoing around one in the air as he loiters at night on the low, long piazza, while the myriad meteors of Arizona skies blaze their way through the transparent air and a sky full of stars contends with the moon for brilliancy; the unearthly, delicate, ethereal coloring of the "Bad Lands" gleaming resplendent on the distant horizon.

If the wanderer has fallen upon particularly fortunate days in his horoscope and found Miss Wanda Muir—her quaint name coming from her mother, the daughter of a Polish nobleman—to drive him out to this marvellous "forest" of stone, he will have a pleasure enhanced by interesting conversation. A graduate of Berkeley College in California, and the constant companion of her father in his wanderings, Miss Muir is indeed an ideal guide, and under her hand one June morning the two horses sped along over the rough, stony ground at a pace to set every fibre tingling. One of the features of the Arizona desert is the arroyo, a dry stream, a ready-made river, so to speak, minus the water. Some of these even have a stream of flowing water, only it is under the bed of the river rather than on top of it, for Arizona is the land of magic and wonder and of a general reversal of accepted conditions.

"Sometimes in driving out here," said Miss Muir, "a cloudburst comes up while we are in the Petrified Forests, and on returning the horses have to swim this dry stream. Once the water was so high it came into the wagon. Not infrequently, when we go out to the forest, some one comes dashing after us on horseback to warn us to get back as quickly as possible, or the torrents of water from a sudden cloudburst will cut us off altogether, perhaps for a day and a night." The pleasing uncertainty of life in Arizona may be realized from this danger of being suddenly drowned in the arid sands of a desert, and being confronted with a sudden Lodore that descends from the heavens on a midsummer noon. But, as one is constantly saying to himself, Arizona is the land of surprises. No known laws of meteorology, or of any other form of science, hold good here. The mountain peak transforms itself into the bottom of a sea, and the sea suddenly upheaves itself in air and figures as a mountain. Arizona is nature's kaleidoscope; it is the land of transformation.

Of the three petrified forests, each separated by a mile or two, the first is reached by a drive of some six miles, while the third is more than twice as far. The second is the largest and most elaborate, and in the aggregate they cover an area of over two thousand acres. The ground is the high rolling mesas, and over it are scattered, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa," the jewel-like fragments of mighty trees in deposits that are the wonder of the scientist. From the huge fallen tree trunks, many of these being over two hundred feet in length and of similar proportions in diameter, to the mere chips and twigs, the forests are transmuted into agate and onyx and chalcedony. Numbers of these specimens contain perfect crystals. They are vivid and striking in color,—in rich Byzantine red, deep greens and purples and yellow, white and translucent, or dark in all color blendings. Great blocks of agate cover many parts of the forest. Hundreds of entire trees are seen. When cut transversely these logs show the bark, the inner fibre, and veining as perfectly as would a living tree. And over all these fallen monarchs of a prehistoric forest bends the wonderful turquoise sky of Arizona, and the air is all the liquid gold of the intense sunshine.

At Tiffany's in New York may be seen huge slabs and sections of this petrified wood under high polish. A fine exhibit of it was made at the Paris exposition in 1900, and a specimen of it was presented to Rodin, the great sculptor, who was incredulous of the possibility that this block, apparently of onyx, could have been wood. Through all the forests are these strange rock formations called buttes, rising in the most weird shapes from the sand and stones and sagebrush of the vast desert. What a treasure-ground of antiquity! This region, which seems a plain, is yet higher than the top of Mount Washington, and the altitude insures almost perpetual coolness. Scientists seem to agree in the theory that the petrified forests are a debatable phenomenon whose origin eludes any final conclusion. It is possible that some mighty sea suddenly arose—perhaps as the present Salton Sea in Southern California—and engulfed them. The land is partly the "bad lands" and partly a sandy plain covered with petrifactions. The third forest contains hundreds of unbroken tree trunks, of which some are over two hundred feet in length. Many of these are partly imbedded in the earth.

All around this high plateau rise on the horizon surrounding cliffs to the height of one hundred and fifty and more feet, serrated into ravines and gorges, variegated with the sandstone formations in all their shimmer of colors, and indicating that this basin was once the bottom of a sea.

It is the paradise of the ethnologist as well as of the geologist. Besides cliff ruins and hieroglyphics, almost anywhere, by chance, one may find traces of submerged walls, and following these, a man with an ordinary spade may dig up prehistoric pottery, skeletons, beads, rings, and occasionally necklaces. The pottery, both in design and in scheme of decoration, shows a high degree of civilization. Who were these prehistoric peoples who had built their pueblos and created their implements and pottery and were already old when Plymouth Rock was new? Much of the symbolic creation here still awaits its interpreter.From these millions of tons of glistening, shining blocks and segments and tree trunks the tourist is not allowed to carry away specimens carte blanche, as formerly. The Petrified Forests are now a government reservation, although not yet one of the government parks. Small specimens, within a reasonable amount, are permitted the tourist as souvenirs.

The Petrified Forests are quarries rather than forests; the great fallen logs, branches, and chips, lying prostrate on the ground, are seen glowing and gleaming like jewels. So far as the eye can reach there is not a human habitation. Over the infinite stretch of sand and rocks bends the bluest of skies, and here and there are prehistoric Indian mines, and one ledge of cliffs on which are strange and as yet undeciphered hieroglyphics. The graves of the prehistoric inhabitants of this region are numerous, each containing rare and choice specimens of pottery which are dug out intact. This region seems to have been once thickly populated. The remains of pueblos are numerous. Skeletons are constantly being found.

Although the visitor is not allowed to carry away with him a trainload or so of specimens, he may still be permitted a beautiful cross-section of an entire tree trunk, showing all the veins of the wood and the bark, a specimen thin enough to be portable, and worthy a place in any cabinet of curiosities, besides many chips showing all the range of beautiful colors which abound in Chalcedony Park. In this park lies a vast fallen tree trunk that forms a natural bridge over a chasm,—a bridge that seems to be of solid agate. These forests are among the great scenic wonders of the world, and if they were in the heart of the Himalayas or some other especially inaccessible spot, all good Americans would hasten to visit them. But our own wonderful and incomparable scenic grandeur is neglected. These "Petrified Forests" are the marvel of the geologist. What has happened, in all the phenomena of nature, to produce this incredible spectacle? Many scientific men believe that these forests did not grow on the spot where they now would lie prostrate, but were swept down by floods when this region was a vast inland sea, and that they became imbedded in the sand; that then the sea vanished and volcanic eruptions poured over, and the wood was hardened to rock. Again, a flood of water passed over and washed away the sand and silt, and the erosion left these thousands of acres of petrifactions exposed on the surface as now; and thus, after millenniums have passed, we have these quarries of chalcedony and agate, onyx, cornelian, topaz, and amethyst.

Every evening at Adamana disclosed a sky panorama of kaleidoscopic wonder. Afar to the horizon the Bad Lands shimmered in a faint dream of colors under the full moon. The stars seemed to hang midway in the air, and frequent meteors blazed through the vast, mysterious space. Adamana is nine hours from Albuquerque, the metropolis of New Mexico, and five hours distant from Flagstaff, to the west. All the thousands of acres of desert lands about require only water to render them richly productive. But water is unattainable. There are no mountain ranges near enough to produce water storage, and unless the twentieth-century scientists discover some way of creating rain, these arid regions must remain as they are. Yet even here American life and energy and progress are seen. The scattered settlers unite in maintaining public schools six months in the year, and with only from twelve to twenty pupils the teacher is paid from seventy-five to eighty dollars a month,—more than twice the salary paid in the country schools in New England. In the little bungalow here at Adamana, where Mr. Stevenson, the government guardian of the Petrified Forests, makes tourists strangely comfortable during their desert sojourn, one finds a piano, a well-selected little library, and young people whose command of the violin and piano offer music that is by no means unacceptable. The children get music lessons—no one knows how; they are eager for any instruction in language, and acquire French and Spanish in some measure, and in all ways the national ambition is sustained. From Albuquerque comes a daily paper, and only one day behind date the Los Angeles papers arrive. One is not out of the world (alas!) even on the Arizona desert.

It is a new world in itself,—the desert of Arizona. No region on the earth is more diversified, more intensely interesting. This desert comprises mountains and plains; it contains that one supreme scenic wonder of the world, the Grand CaÑon; in it are CaÑon Diablo and the Meteorite Mountain. Within its area also is the "Tonto Basin,"—an incalculable chaos of isolated and unrelated cliffs, and crags of mountains peaks that have lost their mountains, and general wreck and ruin. One might fancy that at the end of creation, when the universe itself was completed, all the chips and fragments and dÉbris in general were hurled into the Tonto Basin,—only that, of course, the universe was never "made," but is always in the making; only that the physical configuration of the entire earth is always in process of transformation into new aspects, and nowhere is this progress of the ages more extraordinarily in evidence than in Arizona.

Leaving the Petrified Forest for the Grand CaÑon, one has a wonderful journey of six hours to Williams, and thence three hours over the branch road to Bright Angel, where the new and magnificent hotel, "El Tovar," captivates the travellers, and from which a stage runs to Grand View, thirteen miles away, where Vishnu Temple, the Coliseum, Solomon's Temple, and other wonders of the marvellous sandstone architecture, in the depths of the Grand CaÑon are viewed.

In waiting for the train on the branch road running from Williams to the Grand CaÑon over the beautiful San Franciscan mountains, the hour of waiting at Williams is made a delight by a most unique and interesting curiosity shop under the splendid Harvey management, where all kinds of natural curiosities and Indian and Mexican things are shown. The walls are hung with bright-hued blankets and rugs, the ceiling is decorated and draped, easy-chairs and sofas abound, and these tend to make the journey a kind of royal progress.

In 1540 Pedro de Tovar, one of the officers who accompanied Coronado through his great expedition, passed through Arizona. Even then an extinct civilization was already old. The ruins of the dwellings of those prehistoric people abound near Flagstaff. In the recesses of Walnut CaÑon there are found cliff-dwellings in great numbers. "Some of these are in ruins, and have but a narrow shelf of the once broad floor of solid rock left to evidence their extreme antiquity. Others are almost wholly intact, having stubbornly resisted the weathering of time." Nothing but fragments of pottery now remain of the many quaint implements and trinkets that characterized these dwellings at the time of their discovery.

"Fixed like swallows' nests upon the face of a precipice, approachable from above or below only by deliberate and cautious climbing, these dwellings have the appearance of fortified retreats rather than habitual abodes. That there was a time in the remotest past when warlike peoples of mysterious origin passed southward over this plateau is generally credited. And the existence of the cliff-dwellings is ascribed to the exigencies of that dark period when the inhabitants of the plateau, unable to cope with the superior energy, intelligence, and numbers of the descending hordes, devised these unassailable retreats. All their quaintness and antiquity cannot conceal the deep pathos of their being, for tragedy is written all over these poor hovels hung between earth and sky. Their builders hold no smallest niche in recorded history. Their aspirations, their struggles, and their fate are all unwritten, save on these crumbling stones, which are their sole monument and meagre epitaph. Here once they dwelt. They left no other print on time."

Flagstaff is a pleasant mountain town some seven thousand feet above sea level, and is particularly fortunate in being the site of the Lowell Observatory, founded by Professor Percival Lowell of Boston, which brings eminent astronomers and scientists to the place. In the Lowell Observatory some of the best work in modern science is being accomplished, and Professor Lowell and his staff have for some years been devoting themselves to the special study of Mars. Flagstaff was selected for the site of the observatory on account of the singularly clear and still air of Arizona. It is an atmosphere almost without vibration. Never were distances more curiously deceiving to the eye than in Arizona. A point that is apparently only a few yards away may be, in reality, at a distance of two miles. Professor Lowell and his staff have, therefore, exceptional facilities for their work, and Mr. Carl Otto Lampland, the stellar photographer of the staff, has taken impressions of Mars that seem to leave little doubt in the minds of experts that canals on that planet reflect themselves by the camera. This achievement is recognized by astronomers everywhere as marking an epoch in the study of Mars and as fairly closing the argument regarding the possibility of canals on that body by bringing their construction there as an unquestionable fact. It was Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer, who first observed what he believed were canals on Mars. His report was received with incredulity; but his theory has been so reinforced and supported by actual results of observations since then that it is now generally accepted. Early in the decade of 1880-90 Professor Lowell began a special study at Flagstaff with his fine twenty-four-inch telescope, but it was in May, 1905, that the first results of real significance were obtained. The light about Mars is said to be faint, and the vibrations in the air, though less in Arizona than is usual elsewhere, still produced disturbing effects on the plate. It is said that Mr. Lampland overcame this difficulty after a long series of experiments, "by using a diaphragm on the telescope, cutting down the aperture from twenty-four inches to twelve inches, as a rule. Though this diaphragming of a photographic lens is not new, this was the first time it was applied to a glass as large as twenty-four inches in diameter and for such faint objects. Hitherto astronomers have been more concerned with availing themselves of the light-gathering power of the large lenses. It was a distinct advance, and is the one step to which the largest share of the credit is due of successfully photographing the canals."

In the vestibule of the Institute of Technology in Boston were shown in the spring of 1906 a number of these photographs. To the uninitiated they merely presented a black ground with white lines faintly defined. Professor Lowell says that the special significance of the photographs lies in the fact that they corroborate the results shown by other photographers of Mars, and that they also corroborate the methods. That the sensitive plate of the camera will record a star never visible through even the strongest glass, and thus prove its existence, is a wonderful fact in stellar photography.

CaÑon Diablo is one of the volcanic phenomena of Arizona,—a narrow chasm some two hundred and fifty feet deep, several miles long, and five or six hundred feet wide, which the Santa FÉ road crosses on a wonderful steel spider-web bridge a few miles before reaching Flagstaff. It is one of the curious things for which the tourist is watching. For so intensely interesting is the entire journey westward after leaving La Junta in Colorado, that the traveller who realizes the wonderland through which he is passing is very much on the alert for the landscape.

Between Adamana and Flagstaff is a strangely interesting country. Here is Meteorite Mountain, where evidently a huge meteor fell into the earth with terrific force, upheaving all the surrounding crust and thus producing a mountain with an enormous cavity in its centre. For five years men have been digging here to find the meteor. They have excavated huge fragments of it. The vast hollow crater where the meteorite is supposed to have fallen into the ground is a mile wide. In some fragments of the meteor which were submitted to Sir William Crookes for examination that great scientist found diamonds in small but unmistakable quantities.

The Meteorite Mountain is situated not more than ten miles south of CaÑon Diablo, from which station the traveller may drive to this phenomenal cavity. Within recent months shafts are being projected into the earth to discover, if possible, whether the meteoric theory is the true one. More and more, with every year, is science undertaking to "pluck out the heart of the mystery" in this problematic Arizona. Prof. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, has made a special study of this phenomenon, and it is he who experimented with a magnetic test, assuming that if an enormous meteorite had hurled itself into the earth until it was buried past excavation, the great mass of metallic iron would still respond to the test, and furnish unmistakable proof of its presence if subjected to magnetic attraction. A scientific writer who has recently made a study of Meteorite Mountain thus reports the conditions:

"The mountain is about two hundred feet high, and there are a few stunted pines about its forbidding looking slopes. Going to the top of this mountain, over huge masses of strange-looking rock, one will find a great depression, generally called the crater, though there are no evidences of its volcanic formation. This crater is a huge bowl one mile across and six hundred feet deep. The winds of the desert have blown much sand into the crater, evidently covering the bottom of the depression to a depth of many feet. There is a level space of about forty acres in the bottom of the crater.
"When the gigantic meteor fell hissing into the earth, if it ever did so, the concussion must have been terrific. And in this connection it is interesting to note that the Indians near by have a legend about a huge star falling out of the heavens and dazzling the tribe with its brightness. Then there was a great shock and sudden darkness, and ever since then the Indians have regarded Meteorite Mountain with awe. Some idea of the action of the meteorite can be obtained by throwing a stone into the mud. When the meteorite buried itself far into the earth the sides were heaved up, leaving a rim-like circle about the depression. As the meteorite sank into the earth it must have crushed layers of red sandstone and limestone. It is believed that the white sand found in the crater and on the sides of the mountain is from the sandstone pulverized by the meteor in its descent. This sand was blown skyward and afterward settled down on the mountain, covering it thickly. No sand like it is to be found near the mountain."Men searching the ground surrounding the mountain for a distance of several miles find small meteorites. Several of these weigh as much as one thousand pounds, and others weigh only a fraction of an ounce. The largest pieces were found furthest from the mountain. These meteorites have been proved to be practically non-magnetic. This may explain why the immense body of iron in the buried meteor has not shown any magnetic properties. Needles taken to the mountain have not shown the presence of any great magnetic attraction, and this fact puzzled scientists until it was found that the fragments found near the mountain did not possess magnetism.
"Another interesting discovery is the presence of what is called 'iron shale' near the mountain. These are fragments of burned or 'dead' iron. They might have been broken from the meteorite at the time of the terrific impact, or they might have been snapped from the larger body owing to a sudden cooling process. Inasmuch as the CaÑon Diablo country was at one time an immense inland sea, another interesting theory has been brought forth,—that the meteor fell into this sea, and that the great number of splinters of iron in the neighborhood were caused by the sudden cooling of the molten mass. It has been discovered that these small meteorites contain diamonds."

In the immediate vicinity of Meteorite Mountain several tons of meteoric fragments have been found of which Prof. George Wharton James has one, weighing about a ton, on his lawn at his charming residence in Pasadena. There are also found in this vicinity large amounts of shale which scientists pronounce analogous to the meteorite, but "dead"; yet this shale is highly magnetic and possesses polarity,—one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible properties of electricity.

Professor Gilbert did not meet success when he tried the magnetic test, and in discussing this matter in an address on "The Origin of Hypotheses," delivered before the Geological Society in Washington last year, he said:

"Still another contribution to the subject, while it does not increase the number of hypotheses, is nevertheless important in that it tends to diminish the weight of the magnetic evidence and thus to reopen the question which Mr. Baker and I supposed we had settled. Our fellow-member, Mr. Edwin E. Howell, through whose hands much of the meteoric iron had passed, points out that each of the iron masses, great and small, is in itself a complete individual. They have none of the characters that would be found if they had been broken one from another, and yet, as they are all of one type and all reached the earth within a small district, it must be supposed that they were originally connected in some way.
"Reasoning by analogy from the characters of other meteoric bodies, he infers that the irons were all included in a large mass of some different material, either crystalline rock, such as constitutes the class of meteorites called 'stony,' or else a compound of iron and sulphur, similar to certain nodules discovered inside the iron masses when sawn in two. Neither of these materials is so enduring as iron, and the fact that they are not now found on the plain does not prove their original absence. Moreover, the plain is strewn in the vicinity of the crater with bits of limonite, a mineral frequently produced by the action of air and water on iron sulphides, and this material is much more abundant than the iron. If it be true that the iron masses were thus embedded, like plums in an astral pudding, the hypothetic buried star might have great size and yet only small power to attract the magnetic needle. Mr. Howell also proposes a qualification of the test by volumes, suggesting that some of the rocks beneath the buried star might have been condensed by the shock so as to occupy less space.
"These considerations are eminently pertinent to the study of the crater and will find appropriate place in any comprehensive discussion of its origin; but the fact which is peculiarly worthy of note at the present time is their ability to unsettle a conclusion that was beginning to feel itself secure. This illustrates the tentative nature not only of the hypotheses of science, but of what science calls its results.
"The method of hypotheses, and that method is the method of science, founds its explanations of nature wholly on observed facts, and its results are ever subject to the limitations imposed by imperfect observation. However grand, however widely accepted, however useful its conclusions, none is so sure that it cannot be called into question by a newly discovered fact. In the domain of the world's knowledge there is no infallibility."

Sir William Crookes has been deeply interested in the phenomenon of Meteorite Mountain, which must take rank with the Petrified Forests and even with the Grand CaÑon as one of the marvels of Arizona. The meteoric shower which seems to have accompanied the falling of the huge meteorite—if the theory of its existence is true—has recorded its traces over a radius of more than five miles from the crater-like cavity. The experiment of Dr. Foote is thus described:

"An ardent mineralogist, the late Dr. Foote, in cutting a section of this meteorite, found the tools were injured by something vastly harder than metallic iron, and an emery wheel used in grinding the iron had been ruined. He examined the specimen chemically, and soon after announced to the scientific world that the CaÑon Diablo Meteorite contained black and transparent diamonds. This startling discovery was afterwards verified by Professors Friedel and Moissan, who found that the CaÑon Diablo Meteorite contained the three varieties of carbon,—diamond (transparent and black), graphite, and amorphous carbon. Since this revelation the search for diamonds in meteorites has occupied the attention of chemists all over the world.
"Here, then, we have absolute proof of the truth of the meteoric theory. Under atmospheric influences the iron would rapidly oxidize and rust away, coloring the adjacent soil with red oxide of iron. The meteoric diamonds would be unaffected and left on the surface to be found by explorers when oxidation had removed the last proof of their celestial origin. That there are still lumps of iron left in Arizona is merely due to the extreme dryness of the climate and the comparatively short time that the iron has been on our planet. We are here witnesses to the course of an event which may have happened in geologic times anywhere on the earth's surface."

In this desert plateau of dull red sandstone worn by the erosion and the storms of untold ages, does there indeed lie a submerged star? And if there does, buried so deep in the earth as to elude as yet all the research of science, what force projected it, "shot madly from its sphere," into the desert lands of Arizona? To visit these extraordinary things—the Petrified Forests, the Meteorite Mountain, the Grand CaÑon—is to feel, in the words of the poet,—

"These are but seeds of days,

Not yet a steadfast morn,

An intermittent blaze,

An embryo god unborn.

I snuff the breath of my morning afar,

I see the pale lustres condense to a star:

The fading colors fix,

The vanishing are seen,

And the world that shall be

Twins the world that has been."

Not the least among the phenomena of Arizona is that Emerson, who never saw the Great West, should have left on record in his poems the lines and stanzas that seem as if written from personal familiarity with its unspeakable marvels of scenic and scientific interest.

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