It appeared, that when the people of the _Sydney Cove_ first came
upon the island, the pieces of dead branches that at this time were lying
round the stumps, then formed, with them, the stem and branches of dead
trees complete. But by the time Mr. Bass visited the place, the hands of
curiosity, and the frolics of an unruly horse that was saved from the
wreck, had reduced them to the state already described.
Mr. Bass had been told from good authority, that when the trees were in a
complete state, the diameter of the dead wood of the stem that rose
immediately from the stoney part was equal to the diameter of that part;
and also that a living leaf was seen upon the uppermost branches of one
of them. But he could never learn whether the stony part of the stem was
of an equal height in all the trees.
To ascertain to what depth the petrification had extended, Mr. Bass
scratched away the sand from the foot of many of the stumps, and in no
instance found it to have proceeded more than three or four inches
beneath the surface of the sand, as it then lay; for at that depth the
brown and crumbling remains of the root came into view.
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