Five Strange Sights.
The Oldest Thing on Earth— Lakes of Sod» —Weighing the San— An Odd Prooession —A Ninth Century Cemetery. In the heart of Wyoming Territory is a mountain of solid hematite iron, with GOOfest of it above the ground, more than ft mile wide and over two miles in length ; a bed of ligniU coal big enough to warm the world for centuries ; eight lakes of solid soda, one of them over 600 acres in extent and not lesi than thirty feet in depth, and a petroleum basin which contains more oil than Pennsylvania and West Virginia combined, from whioh in places the oil is oozing in natural wells at the rate of two barrels a day. Trees were found in Afrioa whioh were computed to be 5,150 years old, and a cypress in Mexico is said to have roaohod a still greater age. The oldest tree, if not the oldest living thing upon the globe, is the cypress of Santa Maria del Tule in the Mexican State of Voxaca. The life of this venerable forest monarch has spanned the whole of written history. At last accounts it was still growing, and when Humboldt saw it, it measured forty-two feet in diameter, 126 feet in ciroumferenoe, and 382 feet between the extremities of two branches. Suppose we have a balance gigantio enough for the purpose, and the aim is resting on one of the scales. Now put the earth in the opposite side of the scale. You might as well weigh your head againßt one of the towers of the East River Bridge Pile a hundred thousand earths into the balance, and the sun does not stir. There lies the colossus immovable. But get together another hundred thousand, and then another hundred thousand, and stack them up in the pan against the sun. Three hundred thousand worlds piled up on one side of Unbalance and still the sun keeps them up. It would take IJO.OOO more, or 330,000 earths, to make the beam oven against a single sun. A strange eight was presented in the streets of Tucson, A.T., one day last month. A woman appeared carrying a child's empty coffin on her shoulder, followed by a [lot of little girle. Later the soeno was reversed and the collin waa born by four little girls, followed by s^eral women. It is no uncommon night there to bee a cefffin borno to the grave on the shoulders of a man, but a woman rendering the service waa a novel spectacle. An ancient burying ground was recently unearthed in Paris while digging ft trenoh in tho Rim Salande. The cofiinß of atone and plaster found there have been tiaced to the eeventh, eighth and nine centurios. They were pointed to the cust, and had crosses inBoribed on a cuclo, symbolical of eternity, and other emblemo- of Christianity. The coffins were found filled with dirt, their ooTershftTiog given w»y,— Detroit Free Pret$ t
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Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2078, 31 October 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)
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492Five Strange Sights. Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2078, 31 October 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)
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