Harper's Round Table, February 23, 1897

Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

Author of Rick Dale, The Fur-Seal's Tooth, Snow-Shoes and Sledges, The Mate Series, etc.
As far as the eye could see, and for leagues beyond the reach of vision, one of the most wonderful landscapes of the world was outspread in every direction. Castles of massive build with battlemented towers, Greek temples, slender spires, columns, arches, and walled cities with lofty buildings rising tier above tier met the view on every side. Not only were these structures of the most graceful modelling, but they were of such a brilliancy and variety of coloring as may only be seen in that land of wonders. While the prevailing tints were red or crimson, these were toned and contrasted with every shade of yellow from orange to buff, by greens, purples, and pinks, white, brown, and in fact every variety and combination of color known to nature. Some of the slender columns were even frosted as with silver, while others were surmounted by groups of statuary.
Broad avenues wound in and out among these gaudily tinted structures, and from them wide terraces—red, yellow, pink, or white—swept back and up smooth and regular, as though built of squared marble blocks. Apparently interspersed among these beautiful objects were shady groves, blue lakes, rippling streams, and cool, snow-capped mountains; but these were of such a curious nature that they came and went like the moving pictures of a vitascope. Even the solid objects that one might be certain were real were so sharply reflected in the heated atmosphere above them that it was impossible to discern where substance ended and its pictured counterfeit began.
In thorough keeping with these wonders was another close at hand, which was the strangest of all. It was nothing more nor less than a forest of prostrate trees lying in the wildest confusion, as though levelled by a hurricane. Although they were broken and scattered over a wide area, everything was there to prove that they had once been of vigorous growth and noble proportions. Great trunks, limbs, branches, and even twigs, many of them still retaining their covering of bark, were strewn on every side; but all, even to the tiniest sliver, were turned into stone. Not ordinary gray stone such as appears in the more common fossil forms, but stone of the most exquisite color and shading, such as red jasper, clouded agate, opalescent chalcedony, shaded carnelian, or banded onyx. These substances are deemed precious even in the palace of a Czar, but here they appeared in greatest profusion, many of them retaining so clearly the markings and general aspect of wood that they could not be mistaken for anything else. It was a fossil forest of what had been in some dimly remote geologic age stately pine-trees, with waving tops and whispering branches, perhaps filled with joyous birds, and sheltering the strange animal life of a prehistoric world.