While wandering through the valley of the Clearwater and the adjacent hills, I was much struck with the wonders of petrification. I saw huge fir-logs, petrified. I can never think of what I then saw without recalling a story which I heard while delegate to Congress, and at Washington City. Congress always makes liberal appropriations for the investigation of the flora and fauna, and the mineral indications, as well as the water supply or rainfall, in the territories, and in the desert portions of the United States. Rugged old Ben Wade, while a Senator from Ohio, always opposed these appropriations as a waste of the people's money in what he styled, bug-hunting expeditions. Two scientists, eminent for their learning, and known as Major Hayden and Captain Powell, were usually employed in these explorations. The Major was said to be something of a martinet, while the Captain was an excellent judge of human nature, and had plenty of what the Philosopher Locke called "round-about common-sense." While on one of these scientific exploring expeditions these two gentlemen were in the mountains near Pike's Peak. That country abounds in fine specimens of petrification. One day the Major met a company of miners, and related to them the wonderful specimens of petrification seen by him that day. The miners listened with eloquent, but I fear insincere, attention to the Major's statement. When he had concluded, one of them said: "If you will go with me, Major, to the other side of the ridge, I will show you a specimen of petrification that discounts anything you have seen today." The Major listened while the miner said, that at the base of a nearly perpendicular wall of rock, extending upward several hundred feet, there was an Indian with a rifle in his hand pointing at an angle upward towards the rock; that both Indian and rifle were petrified; that the smoke around the muzzle of the gun was petrified; and, what was more wonderful, that a short distance from the muzzle of the gun a cougar was petrified right in the air. The Major showed some uneasiness as the story proceeded, and said at its conclusion: "I was inclined to believe you when you began, but now I know you are lying." The miner softly put his hand to his pistol, but, relenting, said: "You are a tenderfoot and I forgive you; but why did you say I was lying?" "Because," said the Major, "I know that the laws of gravitation would bring that cougar down." "The laws of gravitation be damned," said the miner, "they were petrified too."