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.
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