Jim Bridger’s tale of the mountain of black glass had roused a shriek of derision that echoed round the earth, yet in time others found it as he had said they would, and as they gazed upon the obsidian cliff they found the tracks of a mare and colt along its base. Homeric mirth had rocked the world at Bridger’s assertion that he had caught fish in the icy waters of a lake and cooked them in boiling springs without rising from his seat or removing his prey from the hook. When explorers reached this spot they found the bones of fish upon the rocks. The lone wanderer had once more preceded them and cooked his meal of trout a month before they came. And it was Woodson himself who now came in for a share of ridicule and met general disbelief when he told men of the petrified forest he had found. It stood on a steep side-hill cut away by the action of water. Tier upon tier it rose, succeeding layers exposed to view, fifteen periods of forestation one above the other. Near the base were stumps more than a dozen feet in diameter, relics of the ages past, when tropical vegetation flourished here. Above these ancient ones, in successive accumulation, was the evidence of the gradual cooling of the earth on down to date, the top strata containing vegetation of the present age. Here were not merely crumbling fragments of bygone periods but exact reproductions, the preserved record of the whole; bark and twigs intact, ferns and shrubbery, even to the buds, held in delicate tracery of stone and sprouting from the outcroppings to the cliff. But in Woodson’s case the disbelief was not so widespread. Men were beginning to believe all things possible of this wondrous corner of the earth. It was decided that he should lead a party to the spot, but when they sought for him the wanderer was gone. Years later he led men to the ledges and they found it as he had said, the most complete record of its kind in the world.