All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic
chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests:
gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely
the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf,
the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared
from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in
primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the
destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest
is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by
man: full of all its sublime grandeur--solemn, vast, and mysterious as
forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests
will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the
deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up
the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the
higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses
of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a
luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied
this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur,
leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys;
running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping
the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through
these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human
being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected
turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green
glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme
simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and
on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the
gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold
exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of
France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the
hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in
perennial perfection.
It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here
attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity--sending
out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier--itself tapering
upwards, and each circle of branches decreasing in diameter until a
hundred and fifty feet are gained. The stems of some of these giants of
the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man
from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees
such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other
times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when
young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an
immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its
summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and
form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, however, it happens
that the tree has been contorted in its early growth, and then broken
afterwards: in such cases it seems to have forgotten its nature
completely, and to have gone mad in its spirit of increase; for it turns
and forces itself into the strangest convolutions and intricacies of
form. It becomes like a short stunted oak, or a thickly knotted thorn:
or it might sometimes be mistaken for a willow, at others for a
cedar--for any thing but one of the same species as the stately spire of
wood that soars up into the heaven close by its side.
When the tree becomes quite dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by
the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its
beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen
of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the
dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of
foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in
strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You
may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage
is mixed with the real covering of the boughs, forming the most
anomalous, and yet the most picturesque of contrasts.
In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety
is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be
found there--the hazel especially--and the thickets thereby formed are
quite impenetrable. As the older and larger trees decay, they lose
their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange
position--presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at
first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. But
wherever a tree falls, there a luxuriant growth of moss succeeds: a
little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations
of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the
prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as
down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer
amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting
couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss
and weed and dirty peat, till his descent is stopped by the skeleton of
the vast tree that lies beneath. Wild flowers grow all around: and every
spot of ground that will produce them is covered in the summer season
with the tempting little red strawberry, or the wild raspberry, or the
blushing rose. Above all, still keep peering, in solemn and interminable
array, the vast monarchs of the wood, the stately and elegant
silver-firs.
When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper
grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of
basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one
unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in
length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round,
and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the
forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant
cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving
tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green,
variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits--one of nature's
secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery
stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in its course, and soon
losing itself in the thick underwood that borders the spot all around.
Such is the Salle de Mirabeau--one of the loveliest of the many lovely
hiding-places of these sublime forests.
The feathered tenants of these woods are mostly birds of prey, or at all
events such as the raven, the jay, the pie, and others which can either
defend themselves against, or escape from, the falcons that consider
these solitudes as their own especial domains. The voices of few
singing-birds are to be heard; they have taken refuge nearer the
habitations of man: but the hooting of the owl, the beating of the
woodpecker, and the screaming of kites and hawks, are all the living
sounds that proceed here from the air. Red-deer, wolves, wild-boars,
roebucks, and foxes, are the denizens of these forests and these
mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and
they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered
these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry
home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower
ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty
of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen.
He who can content himself with his gun or his rod--for the streams are
full of trout--may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the
morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.
Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of
philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society
when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the
Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become
attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy
might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and
theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a
man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the
free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in
towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's
vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont
Dor.