The subject of Trees cannot be exhausted by treating them as individuals
or species, even with a full enumeration of their details. Some trees
possess but little interest, except as they are grouped in assemblages
of greater or less extent. A solitary Fir or Spruce, for example, when
standing in an inclosure or by the roadside, is a stiff and disagreeable
object; but a deep forest of Firs is not surpassed in grandeur by one of
any other species. These trees must be assembled in extensive groups to
affect us agreeably; while the Elm, the Oak, and other wide-spreading
trees, are grand objects of sight, when standing alone, or in any other
situation.
I will not detain the reader with a prolix account of the classification
of trees in assemblages, but simply glance at a few points. The Romans
used four different words to express these distinctions. When they spoke
of a wood with reference to its timber, they used the word _silva_;
_sal[Transcriber's note: remainder of word illegible]_, was a collection
of wild-wood in the mountains; _nemus_, a smaller collection, partaking
of cultivation, and answering to our ideas of a grove; _lucus_ was a
wood, of any description, which was set apart for religious purposes,
or dedicated to some Deity. In the English language we can make these
distinctions intelligible only by the use of adjectives. A _forest_ is
generally understood to be a wild-wood of considerable extent, retaining
all its natural features. A _grove_ is a smaller assemblage of trees,
not crowded together, but possessing very generally their full
proportions, and divested of their undergrowth. Other inferior groups
are designated as _copse_ and _thicket_. The words _park_, _clump_,
_arboretum_, and the like, are mere technical terms, that do not come
into use in a general description of Nature.
Groves, fragments of forest, and inferior groups only are particularly
interesting in landscape. An unbroken forest of wide extent makes but
a dreary picture and an unattractive journey, on account of its gloomy
uniformity. Hence the primitive state of the earth, before it was
modified by human hands, must have been sadly wanting in those romantic
features that render a scene the most attractive. Nature must be
combined with Art, however simple and rude, and associated with human
life, to become deeply affecting to the imagination. But it is not
necessary that the artificial objects of a landscape should be of a
grand historical description, to produce these agreeable effects: humble
objects, indeed, are the most consonant with Nature's sublime aspects,
because they manifest no seeming endeavor to rival them. In the deep
solitary woods, the sight of a woodman's hut in a clearing, of a
farmer's cottage, or of a mere sheepfold, immediately awakens a tender
interest, and enlivens the scene with a tinge of romance.
The earth must have been originally covered with forest, like the
American continent in the time of Columbus. This has in all cases
disappeared, as population has increased; and groves, fragments of
wild-wood, small groups, and single trees have taken its place. Great
Britain, once renowned for its extensive woods, now exhibits only
smaller assemblages, chiefly of an artificial character, which are more
interesting to the landscape-gardener than to the lover of Nature's
primitive charms. Parks, belts, arboretums, and clipped hedge-rows,
however useful as contributing to pleasure, convenience, or science, are
not the most interesting features of wood-scenery. But the customs of
the English nobility, while they have artificialized all the fairest
scenes in the country, and ruined them for the eyes of the poet or the
painter, have been the means of preserving some valuable forests,
which under other circumstances would have been utterly destroyed.
A deer-forest belonging to the Duke of Athol comprises four hundred
thousand acres; the forest of Farquharson contains one hundred and
thirty thousand acres; and several others of smaller extent are still
preserved as deer-parks. Thus do the luxuries of the rich tend, in
some instances, to preserve those natural objects of which they are in
general the principal destroyers.
Immense forests still overspread a great part of Northern Russia,
through which it has been asserted that a squirrel might traverse
hundreds of miles, without touching the ground, by leaping from tree to
tree. Since the general adoption of railroad travelling, however, great
ravages have been made in these forests, and not many years will be
required to reduce them to fragments. In the South of Europe a great
part of the territory is barren of woods, and the climate has suffered
from this cause, which has diminished the bulk of the streams and
increased the severity of droughts. But Nature has established a partial
remedy for the evil arising from the imprudent destruction of forests,
in lofty and precipitous mountains, that serve not only to perpetuate
moisture for the supply of rain to the neighboring countries, but
contribute also to preserve the timber in their inaccessible ravines.
Were it not for this safeguard of mountains, the South of Europe would
ere this have become a desert, from the destruction of its forests, like
Sahara, whose barrenness was anciently produced by the same cause.
Most of the territory of North America is still comparatively a
wilderness; but in the United States the forests have been so
extensively invaded, that they seldom exhibit any distinct outlines, and
few of them possess the character of unique assemblages. They are but
scattered fragments of the original forest, through which the settlers
have made their irregular progress from east to west, diversifying it
with roads, farms, and villages. The recent clearings are palisaded by
tall trees, exhibiting a naked outline of skeleton timber, without any
attractions. It is in the old States only that we see anything like a
picturesque grouping of woods; and here, the absence of art and design,
in the formation and relative disposition of these groups, gives them
a peculiar interest to the lover of natural scenery. There is a charm,
therefore, in New-England landscape, existing nowhere else in
equal degree; but this is rapidly giving place to those artificial
improvements that are destined to ruin the face of the country, which
owes its present attractions to the spontaneous efforts of Nature,
modified only by the unartistic operations of a simple agriculture.
Travelling in a forest, though delightful as an occasional recreation,
is, when continued many hours in succession, unless one be engaged
in scientific researches, very monotonous and wearisome. Even the
productions of a forest are not so various as those of a tract in which
all the different conditions of wildness and culture are intermingled. A
view of an unbroken wilderness from an elevation is equally monotonous.
Wood must be blended with other forms of landscape, with pasture and
tillage, with roads, houses, and farms, to convey to the mind the
most agreeable sensations. The monotony of unbroken forest-scenery is
partially relieved in the autumn by the mixed variety of tints belonging
to the different trees; but this does not wholly subdue the prevailing
expression of dreariness and gloom.
Nothing can surpass the splendor of this autumnal pageantry, as beheld
in the Green Mountains of Vermont and Western Massachusetts, in the
early part of October. This region abounds in Sugar-Maples, which are
very beautifully tinted, and in a sufficient variety of other trees to
delight the eye with every specious hue. A remarkable appearance may
always be observed in Maples. Some trees of this kind are entirely
green, with the exception perhaps of a single bough, which is of a
bright crimson or scarlet. Sometimes the lower half of the foliage will
be green, while the upper part is entirely crimsoned, resembling a spire
of flame rising out of a mass of verdure. In other cases this order is
reversed, and the tree presents the appearance of a green spire
rising out of flame. We see no end to the variety of these apparently
capricious phenomena, which some have explained by supposing the
colored branches to be affected with partial disease that hastens their
maturity: but this can hardly be admitted as the true explanation,
as such appearances exist when no other symptoms of malady can be
discovered.
So much has been said and written of late in regard to the tints of
autumn leaves, that the writer of this cannot be expected to advance
anything new concerning them. Let me remark, however, that these
beautiful tintings are not due to the action of frost, which is, on
the contrary, highly prejudicial to them, as we may observe on several
different occasions. If, for example, a frost should occur in September
of sufficient intensity to cut down the tender annuals of our
gardens,--after this, when the tints begin to appear, the outer portion
of the foliage that was touched by the frost will exhibit a sullied and
rusty hue. The effects of these early frosts are seldom apparent while
the leaves are green, except on close inspection; for a very intense
frost is required to sear and roll up the leaves. Early autumnal frosts
seldom do more than to injure their capacity to receive a fine tint when
they become mature.
The next occasion that renders the injurious effects of frost apparent
is later in the season, after the tints are very generally developed.
Every severe frost that happens at this period impairs their lustre, as
we may perceive on any day succeeding a frosty night, when the woods,
which were previously in their gayest splendor, will be faded to a
duller and more uniform shade,--as if the whole mass had been dipped
into a brownish dye, leaving the peculiar tints of each species dimly
conspicuous through this shading. The most brilliant and unsullied hues
are displayed in a cool, but not frosty autumn, succeeding a moderate
summer. Very warm weather in autumn hastens the coloring process, and
renders the hues proportionally transient. I have known Maple woods,
early in October, to be completely embrowned and stripped of their
leaves by two days of summer heat. Cool days and nights, unattended with
frost, are the favorable conditions for producing and preserving the
beauty of autumnal wood-scenery.
The effects of heat and frost are not so apparent in Oak woods, which
have a more coriaceous and persistent foliage than other deciduous
trees: but Oaks do not attain the perfection of their beauty, until
the Ash, the Maple, and the Tupelo--the glory of the first period of
autumn--have shed a great portion of their leaves. The last-named trees
are in their splendor during a period of about three weeks after the
middle of September, varying with the character of the season.
Oaks are not generally tinted until October, and are brightest near the
third week of this month, preserving their lustre, in great measure,
until the hard frosts of November destroy the leaves. The colors of the
different Oaks are neither so brilliant nor so variegated as those of
Maples; but they are more enduring, and serve more than those of any
other woods to give character to our autumnal landscapes.
It would be difficult to convey to the mind of a person who had never
witnessed this brilliant, but solemn pageantry of the dying year, a
clear idea of its magnificence. Nothing else in Nature will compare
with it: for, though flowers are more beautiful than tinted leaves, no
assemblage of flowers, or of flowering trees and shrubs, can produce
such a deeply affecting scene of beauty as the autumn woods. If we would
behold them In their greatest brilliancy and variety, we must journey
during the first period of the Fall of the Leaf in those parts of the
country where the Maple, the Ash, and the Tupelo are the prevailing
timber. If we stand, at this time, on a moderate elevation affording a
view of a wooded swamp rising into upland and melting imperceptibly into
mountain landscape, we obtain a fair sight of the different assemblages
of species, as distinguished by their tints. The Oaks will be marked, at
this early period, chiefly by their unaltered verdure. In the lowland
the scarlet and crimson hues of the Maple and the Tupelo predominate,
mingled with a superb variety of colors from the shrubbery, whose
splendor is always the greatest on the borders of ponds and
water-courses, and frequently surpasses that of the trees. As the plain
rises into the hill-side, the Ash-trees may be distinguished by their
peculiar shades of salmon, mulberry, and purple, and the Hickories by
their invariable yellows. The Elm, the Lime, and the Buttonwood are
always blemished and rusty: they add no brilliancy to the spectacle,
serving only to sober and relieve other parts of the scenery.
When the second period of the Fall of the Leaf has arrived, the woods
that were first tinted have mostly become leafless. The grouping of
different species is, therefore, very apparent at this time,--some
assemblages presenting the denuded appearance of winter, some remaining
still green, while the Oaks are the principal attraction, with an
intermixture of a few other species, whose foliage has been protected
and the development of their hues retarded by some peculiarity of
situation. Green rows of Willows may also be seen by road-sides in damp
places, and irregular groups of them near the water-courses. The foreign
trees--seldom found in woods--are still unchanged, as we may observe
wherever there is a row of European Elms, Weeping Willows, or a
hedge-row of Privet.
One might suppose that a Pine wood must look particularly sombre in this
grand spectacle of beauty; but it cannot be denied that in those regions
where there is a considerable proportion of Pines the perfection of this
scenery is witnessed. Something is needful to relieve the eye as it
wanders over such a profusion of brilliant colors. Pine woods provide
this relief, and cause the tinted forest groups to stand out in greater
prominence. In many districts where Pines were the original growth, they
still constitute the larger sylvan assemblages, while the deciduous
trees stand in scattered groups on the edge of the forest, and the
contiguous plain. The verdurous Pine wood forms a picturesque groundwork
to set off the various groups in front of it; and the effect of a
scarlet Oak or Tupelo rising like a spire of flame in the midst of
verdure is far more striking than if it stood where it was unaffected by
contrast.
The cause of the superior tinting of the American forest, compared with
that of Europe, has never been satisfactorily explained, though it
seems to be somewhat inexplicably connected with the brightness of the
American climate. It is a subject that has not engaged the attention of
scientific travellers, who seem to have regarded it as worthy only of
the describer of scenery. It may, however, deserve more attention as a
scientific fact than has been generally supposed,--particularly as one
of the phenomena that perhaps distinguish the productions of the eastern
from those of the western coasts of the two grand divisions of the
earth. I have observed that the Smoke-tree, which is a Sumach from
China, and the Cydonia Japonica, are as brightly colored in autumn as
any of our indigenous shrubs; while the Silver-Maple, which, though
indigenous in the Western States, probably originated on the western
coast of America, shows none of the fine tinting so remarkable in the
other American Maples. These facts have led me to conjecture that this
superior tinting of the autumnal foliage may be peculiar to the
eastern coasts both of the Old and the New Continent, in the northern
hemisphere. May not this phenomenon bear some relation to the colder
winters and the hotter summers of the eastern compared with the western
coasts? I offer this suggestion as a query, not as a theory, and
with the hope that it may induce travellers to make some particular
observations in reference to it.
The indigenous trees of America, or rather of the Atlantic side of this
continent, are remarkable not only for their superior autumnal hues,
but also for the shorter period during which the foliage remains on the
trees and retains its verdure. Our fruit-trees, which are all exotics,
retain their foliage long after our forest-trees are leafless; and if
we visit an arboretum in the latter part of October, we may select the
American from the foreign species, by observing that the latter are
still green, while the others are either entirely denuded, or in that
colored array which immediately precedes the fall of the leaf.
The exotics may likewise be distinguished in the spring by their
precocity,--their leaves being out a week or ten days earlier than the
leaves of our trees. Hence, if we take both the spring and autumn into
the account, the foreign, or rather the European species, show a period
of verdure of three or four weeks' greater duration than the American
species. Many of the former, like the Weeping Willow, do not lose
their verdure, nor shed their leaves, until the first wintry blasts of
November freeze them upon their branches and roll them into a crisp.
In a natural forest there is a very small proportion of perfectly formed
trees; and these occur only in such places as permit some individuals to
stand isolated from the rest, and to spread out their branches to their
full extent. When we walk in a forest, we observe several conditions
which are favorable to this full expansion of their forms. On the
borders of a pond or morass, or of an extensive quarry, the trees
extend their branches into the opening, but, as they are cramped on the
opposite side, they are only half developed. But this expansion takes
place on the side that is exposed to view: hence the incomparable beauty
of a wood on the borders of a pond, or on the banks of a river, as
viewed from the water; also of a wood on the outside of an islet in a
lake or river.
Fissures or cavities sometimes occur in a large rock, allowing
a solitary tree that has become rooted there to attain its full
proportions. It is in such places, and on sudden eminences that rise
above the forest-level, on a precipice, for example, that overlooks the
surrounding wood, that the forest shows individual trees possessing the
characters of standards, like those we see by the roadsides and in the
open field. We must conclude, therefore, that a primitive forest must
contain but a very small proportion of perfect trees: these are, for
the most part, the occupants of land cleared by cultivation, and may be
found also among the sparse growth of timber that has come up in pasture
land, where the constant browsing of cattle prevents the formation of
any dense assemblages.
In the opinion of Whately, grandeur is the prevailing character of a
forest, and beauty that of a grove. This distinction may seem to
be correct, when such collections of wood exhibit all their proper
characters: but perfectly unique forms of wood are seldom found in this
country, where almost all the timber is of spontaneous growth. We have
genuine forests; but other forms of wood are of a mixed character, and
we have rather fragments of forest than legitimate groves. In the South
of Europe many of the woods are mere plantations, in which the trees
were first set in rows, with straight avenues, or vistas, passing
directly through them from different points. In an assemblage of this
kind there can be nothing of that interesting variety observed in a
natural forest, and which is manifestly wanting even in woods planted
with direct reference to the attainment of these natural appearances.
"It is curious to see," as Gilpin remarks, "with what richness of
invention, if I may so speak, Nature mixes and intermixes her trees, and
shapes them into such a wonderful variety of groups and beautiful forms.
Art may admire and attempt to plant and to form combinations like hers;
but whoever observes the wild combinations of a forest and compares them
with the attempts of Art has little taste, if he do not acknowledge with
astonishment the superiority of Nature's workmanship."
When a tract is covered with a dense growth of tall trees, especially of
Pines, which have but little underbrush, the wood represents overhead a
vast canopy of verdure supported by innumerable lofty pillars. No one
could enter these dark solitudes without feeling a deep impression of
sublimity, especially if it be an hour of general stillness of the
winds. The voices of animals and of birds, particularly the hammering
of the woodpecker, serve to magnify our perceptions of grandeur. A very
slight sound, during a calm in one of these deep woods, like the
ticking of a clock in a vast hall, has a distinctness almost startling,
especially if there be but little undergrowth. These feeble sounds
afford one a more vivid sense of the magnitude of the place than louder
sounds, that differ less from those we hear in the open plain. The
canopy of foliage overhead and the absence of undergrowth are favorable
to those reverberations which are so perceptible in a Pine wood.
In a grove we experience different sensations. Here pleasantness and
cheerfulness are combined, and the feeling of grandeur is excited only
perhaps by the sight of some noble tree. In a grove the trees are
generally well formed, many of them being nearly perfect in their
proportions. Their shadows are cast separately upon the ground, which is
green beneath them as in an orchard. If we look upon them from a near
eminence, we observe a variety of outlines, and may identify the
different species by their shape, while in the forest we see one
unbroken mass of foliage. A wild-wood is frequently converted into a
grove by clearing it of undergrowth and leaving the space a grassy lawn.
It may then yield us shade, coolness, and other agreeable sensations of
a cultivated wood, but the individual trees always retain their gaunt
and imperfect shapes.
The greater part of the woodland of this country partakes of the
characters of both forest and grove, exhibiting a pleasant admixture of
each, combined with pasture and thicket. In Great Britain the woods are
chiefly groves and parks: a wild-wood of spontaneous growth is now rare
in that country, once renowned for the extent and beauty of its forests.
Most of our American woods are fragments of forest, particularly in
the Western States, where they stand out prominently, and deform
the landscape by presenting a perpendicular front of naked pillars,
unrelieved by any foliage. They remind one of those houses, in the city,
which have been cut asunder to widen a street, leaving the interior
rooms and partition-walls exposed to view. These sections of wood are
the grand picturesque deformity of a country lately cleared. In the
older settlements, a recent growth of wood has in many instances come
up outside of these palisades, serving in a measure to conceal their
baldness.
The most lovely appearances in landscape are caused by the spontaneous
growth of miscellaneous trees, some in dense assemblages and some in
scattered groups, with here and there a few single trees standing in
open space. Such is the scenery of considerable portions of the Atlantic
States, both North and South. These varied assemblages of wood and
shrubbery are the characteristic features of the landscape in the
older villages of New England, and indeed of all the States that were
established before the Revolution. But the New-England system of
farming--so much abhorred by those who wish to bring agriculture to
such a state of improvement as shall make it profitable exclusively
to capitalists--has been more favorable to the sylvan beauty of the
landscape than that of any other part of the continent. At the South,
especially, where agriculture is carried on in large plantations, we see
wide fields of tillage, and forest groups of corresponding size. But the
small and independent farming of New England--as favorable to general
happiness as it is to beautiful scenery--has produced a charming variety
of wood, pasture, and tillage, so agreeably intermixed that one is never
weary of looking upon it. The varied surface of the landscape, in the
uneven parts which are not mountainous, has increased these advantages,
producing an endless multitude of those limited views which may be
termed picturesque.
In no other part of the country are the minor inequalities of surface so
frequent as in New England: I allude to that sort of ruggedness which is
unfavorable to any "mammoth" system of agriculture, and plainly evinces
that Nature and Providence have designed this part of the country for
free and independent labor. Here little meadows, of a few acres in
extent, are common, encircled by green pasture hills or by wood. A
rolling surface is more favorable to grandeur of scenery; but nothing
is more beautiful than landscape formed by hills rising suddenly out of
perfect levels. As it is not my present purpose to treat of landscape in
general, I will simply remark that the barrenness of a great part of the
soil of the Eastern States is favorable to picturesque scenery. This may
seem a paradoxical assertion to those who can see no beauty except
in universal fatness; but unvaried luxuriance is fatal to variety of
scenes, though it undoubtedly encourages the development of individual
growth. An agreeable intermixture of various sylvan assemblages is one
of the effects of a barren soil, containing numerous fertile tracts.
Not having in general sufficient strength to produce timber, it covers
itself with diverse groups of vegetation, corresponding with the
varieties of soil and surface. Thus, in a certain degree, we are obliged
to confess that beauty springs out of Nature's deficiencies.
We live in a latitude and upon a soil, therefore, which are favorable
to the harmonious grouping of vegetation. As we proceed southward, we
witness a constant increase of the number of species gathered together
in a single group. Nature is more addicted at the North to the habit of
classifying her productions and of assembling them in uniform phalanxes.
The painter, on this account, finds more to interest the eye and to
employ his pencil in the picturesque regions of frost and snow; while
the botanist finds more to exercise his observation in the crowded
variety that marks the region of perpetual summer.
But while vegetation is more generally social in high latitudes, several
families of Northern trees are entirely wanting in this quality. Seldom
is a forest composed chiefly of Elms, Locusts, or Willows. Oaks and
Birches are associated in forests, Elms in groves, and Willows in small
groups following the courses of streams. Those Northern trees which are
most eminently social, including the two just named, are the Beech, the
Maple, the Hickory, the coniferous trees, and some others; and by the
predominance of any one kind the character of the soil may be partially
determined. There is no tree that grows so abundantly in miry land,
both North and South upon this continent, as the Red Maple. It occupies
immense tracts of morass in the Middle States, and is the last tree
which is found in swamps, according to Michaux, as the Birch is the last
we meet in ascending mountains. The Sugar-Maple is confined mostly to
the Northeastern parts of the continent. Poplars are not generally
associated exclusively in forests; but at the point where the Ohio
and the Mississippi mingle their waters are grand forests of Deltoid
Poplars, that stamp upon the features of that region a very peculiar
physiognomy.
The characteristics of different woods, composed chiefly of one family
of trees, would make an interesting study; but it would be tiresome
to enter minutely into their details. Some are distinguished by a
superfluity, others by a deficiency of undergrowth. In general, Pine and
Fir woods are of the latter description, differing in this respect
from deciduous woods. These differences are most apparent in large
assemblages of wood, which have a flora as well as a fauna of their own.
The same shrubs and herbaceous plants, for example, are not common to
Oak and to Pine woods. There is a difference also in the cleanness and
beauty of their stems. The gnarled habit of the Oak is conspicuous
even in the most crowded forest, and coniferous woods are apt to be
disfigured by dead branches projecting from the bole. The Birch, the
Poplar, and the Beech are remarkable for the straightness, evenness, and
beauty of their shafts, when assembled in a dense wood.
Some of the most beautiful forests in high latitudes consist of White
Canoe-Birches. We see them in Massachusetts only in occasional groups,
but farther north, upon river-banks, they form woods of considerable
extent and remarkable beauty; and with their tall shafts, and their
smooth white bark, resembling pillars of marble, supporting a canopy of
bright green foliage, on a light feathery spray, they constitute one of
the picturesque attractions of a Northern tour. Nature seems to indicate
the native habitat of this noble tree by causing its exterior to bear
the whiteness of snow, and it would be difficult to estimate its
importance to the aboriginal inhabitants of Northern latitudes. Yellow
Birch woods are not inferior in their attractions: individual trees
of this species are often distinguished among other forest timber by
extending their feathery summits above the level of the other trees.
The small White Birch is never assembled in large forest groups. Like
the Alder, it seems to be employed by Nature for the shading of her
living pictures, and for producing those gradations which are the charm
of spontaneous wood-scenery. In this part of the continent, a Pitch-Pine
wood is commonly fringed with White Birches, and outside of these with
a lower growth of Hazels, Cornels, and Vacciniums, uniting them
imperceptibly with the herbage of the plain. The importance of this
native embroidery is not sufficiently considered by those industrious
plodders who are constantly destroying wayside shrubbery, as if it were
the pest of the farm,--nor by those "improvers," on the other hand, who
wage an eternal warfare against little spontaneous groups of wood, as
if they thought everything outside of the forest an intruder, if it was
planted by accident, and had not cost money before it was placed there.
Give me an old farm, with its stone-walls draped with Poison-Ivy and
Glycine, and verdurous with a mixed array of Viburnums, Hazels, and
other wild shrubbery, harboring thousands of useful birds, and smiling
over the abundant harvests which they surround, before the finest
artistical landscape in the world!
Pines are remarkably social in their habit, and cover immense tracts in
high latitudes, extending southward, on this continent, as far as the
very boundary of the tropics, where they are found side by side with the
Dwarf Palm of Florida. But in the region of the true Palms the Pine is
wanting. It is worthy of remark, however, that in the fossil vegetation
of the Eocene world these two vegetable tribes are found associated.
This fact, it seems to me, should be attributed to the mixing of the
mountain Pines with the Palms of the sea-level, during that revulsion of
Nature by which they were hurled into the same chaotic heap. We are not
obliged to infer from their contiguity in these geological remains, that
the two species ever flourished together in the same region.
Pine woods possess attractions of a peculiar kind: all lovers of Nature
are enraptured with them, and there is a grandeur about them which is
felt at once, when we enter them. Their dark verdure, their deep shade,
their lofty height, and their branches which are ever mysteriously
murmuring, as they are swayed by the wind, render them singularly solemn
and sublime. This expression is increased by the hollow reverberating
interior of the wood, caused by its clearness and freedom from
underbrush. The ground beneath is covered by a matting of fallen leaves,
making a smooth brown carpet, that renders a walk within its precincts
as comfortable as in a garden. The foliage of the Pine is so hard and
durable that in summer we always find the last autumn's crop lying upon
the ground in a state of perfect soundness, and under it that of the
preceding year only partially decayed. The foliage of two summers,
therefore, lies upon the surface, checking the growth of humble
vegetation, and permitting only certain species of plants to flourish
with vigor.
Mushrooms of various forms and sizes spring out of these decayed leaves,
often rivalling the flowers in elegance. Monotropas, uniting some of
the habits of the Fungi with the botanical characters of the flowering
plants, flourish side by side with the snowy Cypripedium and the
singular Coral-Weed. The evergreen Dewberry, a delicate species of
Rubus, trails its glossy leaves over the turfs, and mingles its beaded
fruit with the scarlet berries of the Mitchella. The Pyrola, named
by the Indians Pipsissewa, and regarded by them as a specific for
consumption, suspends its pale purple flowers in beautiful umbels, as if
to invite the feeble invalid to accept its proffered remedies. Variety,
indeed, may be found in these deep shades; but it exists without
that profusion which in more favored situations often benumbs our
susceptibility to the charms of Nature.
The edging of a Pine wood depends on the character of the soil. The
Pitch-Pine, that delights in sandy plains, is embroidered at the North
by White Birches; and if a road be cut through a wood of this kind,
these graceful trees immediately spring up in abundance by the wayside.
If a pond occurs in the middle of a Pine wood, its margin is covered
first with low bushes, such as the Andromeda, the Myrica, and the
sweet-scented Azalea, then Alders and Willows rise between them and the
forest. On the side of the pond that is bounded by high gravelly banks,
the margin will be covered by Poplars and Birches. The White Pine, the
most noble and the most beautiful tree of the whole coniferous tribe,
predominates in the New-England forest; though some wide tracts are
covered with the more homely Pitch-Pines, which are the trees that scent
the atmosphere on damp still days with their delightful terebinthine
odors. The woods in the vicinity of Concord, N.H., on the banks of the
Merrimack, known by the poetic appellation of "The Dark Plains", are
of this description. In still higher latitudes the dark, majestic Firs
become the prevailing timber, and are regarded as typical of sub-arctic
regions, where they are accompanied, as if to form a striking and
cheerful contrast with their melancholy grandeur, by groups of graceful
Birches, and lively, tremulous Poplars.
The Pine-Barrens of the Southern States are celebrated as healthful
retreats for the inhabitants of seaport towns, whither they resort in
summer for security from the prevailing fevers. They are of a mixed
character, consisting of the Northern Pitch-Pine, the Broom-Pine, and
the Cypress, intermixed with Red Maples, Sweet Gums, and other deciduous
trees. The Pines, however, are the dominant growth: but here they do not
grow so compactly as in colder regions, standing widely apart, with a
frequent intervening growth of Willows and shrubbery. The sparseness of
these woods may be in part attributed to the practice of tapping the
trees for their turpentine, which has caused them for a century past to
be gradually thinned by consequent decay. Their tall, gaunt forms and
almost branchless trunks show that they obtained their principal growth
in a dense wood.
The first time I entered one of these Pine-Barrens was some years since,
in the month of June, when vegetation was in its prime, before the
summer droughts had seared the green herbage, and when the flowering
trees and shrubs were in all their glory. During my botanical rambles in
the wood, I was struck with the multitude of beautiful flowers in its
shady retreats,--seeming the more numerous to me, as I had previously
confined my researches to Northern woods. The Phlox grew here in all its
native grace and delicacy, where it had never known the fostering hand
of Art. Crimson Rhexias, called by the inhabitants Deer-Weed, were
distributed among the grassy knolls, like clusters of Picotees.
Variegated Passion-Flowers were conspicuous on the bare white sand that
checkered the ground, displaying their emblematic forms on their low
repent vines, and reminding the wanderer in these almost trackless
solitudes of that Faith which was founded on humility and crowned with
martyrdom. Here, too, the Spiderwort of our gardens, in a meeker form of
beauty and with a paler radiance, luxuriated under the protection of the
wood. Already I observed the predominance of luxuriant vines, indicating
our nearness to the tropic, wreathed gayly over the tall and branchless
trunks of the trees: some, like the Bignonia, in a full blaze of
crimson; others, like the Climbing Fern, draping the trees in continual
verdure.
These Pines constitute a great part of the timber of the flat country
between the mountains and the coast, and render a journey through
that region singularly monotonous and gloomy. In the low grounds, a
considerable proportion of the wood consists of the Southern Cypress, a
graceful and magnificent tree, whose appearance would be very lively
and cheerful, were it not for the abundance of long trailing "moss"
(_usnea_) that hangs, like funereal drapery, from its branches, and
darkens the whole forest. This parasitic appendant wreathes the woods
sometimes almost in darkness, especially in those immense tracts on the
borders of the Mexican Gulf that consist entirely of Cypress. There it
has been poetically styled the "Garlands of Death," as significant of
the fevers that prevail wherever it is abundant.
It is remarkable that the two extremes of climate are distinguished
by the predominance of evergreens in their vegetation. Thus, the
acicular-leaved trees, consisting of Pines and their congeners, mark the
cold-temperate and sub-arctic zones, in north latitude,--while Myrtles,
Magnolias, and other broad-leaved evergreens, mark the equatorial and
tropical regions. The deciduous trees belong properly to the temperate
zones, and constitute, indeed, the most interesting of all arborescent
vegetation.
With regard to the age of forests, it may be affirmed that there are
some undoubtedly in existence which are coeval with the earliest history
of nations; but no individual trees are of such antiquity. Like nations,
the assemblage may be perpetual, while the members that compose it are
constantly perishing, and leaving their places to be supplied by others
of more recent origin. Probably the earth does not contain forests in
which any tree exceeds a thousand years of age, though the oldest forest
extant may be as ancient as the Chinese Empire; for the oldest trees
are not found in dense assemblages, but are probably such as have grown
singly in isolated situations. As soon as a tree in a forest begins to
feel the infirmities of age, its place is usurped by some young and more
vigorous neighbor, and it is gradually deprived of subsistence in this
unequal contest. The tempests and tornadoes, it may be added, which
occasionally sweep over a country, commonly make the oldest and tallest
trees their victims; for events seem to follow the same course in a
forest as in human society. The most vigorous growers at any period
continue to flourish a certain length of time at the expense of others;
but when they have risen above the common level, they become marks for
destruction,--they fall before certain inimical forces that do not reach
their more humble companions.
It was the opinion of Humboldt, that, if any tract of wooded country
deserves to be considered a part of the great "primeval forest", it is
"that boundless district which, in the torrid zone of South America,
connects the river-basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco." This tract,
unequalled in extent by any other forest in the world, occupies an area
of more than a thousand miles square. In this vast chaos of teeming
vegetation, trees of the largest dimensions are connected by an
undergrowth of vines and shrubbery which is almost impenetrable. Immense
rivers and their tributaries intersect the forest in all directions, and
constitute the only avenues of commercial intercourse. This impervious
thicket is like a huge wall, separating near neighbors, rendering them,
as it were, inhabitants of distant regions, and obliging them to make
long and circuitous river journeys before they can hold communication.
Here the leaves of the trees are always green, and flowers appear in
constant succession; but the surface of the ground is without herbage,
for the darkness of the wood is fatal to all humble vegetation. The
small plants are mostly parasites, thousands inserting their roots into
the bark of trees and garlanding them with beauty. Those that take root
in the ground show but few leaves or flowers, until they have clambered
upwards, through the underwood, into the light of heaven. Almost the
only relief afforded the sight, in this vast solitude, comes from the
rivers and other collections of water, over whose expanse the eye revels
with the delight we feel on emerging from the gloom of a cavern. Every
object seems to be struggling to get outside of this chaotic growth,
where it can obtain the genial influence of the sun: for near the
surface of the ground are perpetual shade and hideous entanglement.
In this primeval forest we must not expect to realize any of our
poetical ideas of the primitive residence of the first human family.
Here are no Arcadian scenes of peace and rural felicity. On all sides we
behold an undying competition for light and life, among both plants
and animals. We are reminded here of life in a crowded city, where
the excessive abundance of supplies for human wants imported from the
surrounding country causes a still greater superfluity of population,
and produces a struggle for a livelihood more severe than in a rural
district of gravel and boulders. The oases of this great wilderness are
those places in which there is an absence of the general fertility:
barrenness in such circumstances is a relief,--because it allows both
freedom and repose.
This wood is the nursery of all descriptions of monsters, living chiefly
in trees. On their branches and in their tangled recesses, adorned with
all sorts of foliage and flowers, creatures the most terrible and the
most loathsome are seen crowding and crouching in close proximity to
the most beautiful forms of living things. They fill the air with their
discordant utterances, and allow no permanent silence or tranquillity.
Hours of periodical stillness and repose, occurring mostly at noonday,
and affecting one with a sensation of awful grandeur, by contrast with
the preceding disturbances, are followed, especially in the night, by a
tumultuous roar from the legions of contending animals.
"A universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults the ear
With loudest vehemence."
Even the notes of insects are a deafening crash, like the rattling of
machinery in a cotton-mill. Except in the hush of noonday, the notes of
singing-birds are drowned amidst the howling of monkeys, the whining of
sapajous, the roar of the jaguar, and the dismal hooting of thousands
of wild animals that riot in these awful solitudes. The sight of the
fairest flowers and the most beautiful insects and birds only renders
one more keenly sensitive to the frightful discords that startle and the
perils that surround him.
Similar contrasts are observed in the vegetation of this region, where
the giant trees of the forest are chained in the embraces of vines that
contend with them for existence and finally strangle them. Trees and
other plants are crowded together so promiscuously, that Nature seems to
be striving to collect into one space every possible variety of species.
Trees of the most poisonous and deadly qualities grow side by side with
the Bread-Fruit, the Cocoa-Nut, and the beneficent Cinchona. Here
are the poison and its antidote,--the monster tree and its miniature
epiphyte,--the plant that astonishes by its magnitude, and the one that
delights us by its minuteness. Here, if anywhere on the face of the
earth, may we form some conception of the state of our planet during the
Eocene period, before the world had come under the dominion of the human
race.
But if Nature in this region has manifested an exuberance of animal and
vegetable life, thereby rendering her bounties almost unavailable to
man, there are other parts in which she seems to have provided for his
particular benefit. In these favored regions, we find the Banana, the
Cocoa, and the Date Palm, and other special gifts of Providence to the
inhabitants of the equator. Palms are generally found only in small
groups and plantations, but there are certain species of this family
which are associated in extensive woods, and constitute, in some
respects, one of the most charming descriptions of forest-scenery. The
Dwarf Palms of the sub-tropical regions are chiefly assembled in masses,
of which the Palmetto of Florida and the Chaemerops of the South of
Europe are conspicuous examples. The true Palms are likewise sometimes
associated in forests, though not generally of a social habit. In one
of the most celebrated of these, at the mouth of the Orinoco, composed
chiefly of the Mauritian Palms, the wild Guaranos have established a
national existence. Like monkeys, they live almost wholly in trees,
having their habitations supported either by wooden pillars or by a
matting suspended from tree to tree. In the wet season, when the ground
is inundated, the inhabitants travel about their village in canoes.
The beauty of a grove of Palms has been a favorite theme of travellers.
Humboldt, who saw Nature with the eye of a painter and the feelings of
a poet, amidst all the dry details of science, regards them as the most
beautiful of vegetable productions. It has always seemed to me, however,
that travellers in general have been led to exaggerate the charms of
Nature in the tropics, by observing the remarkable beauty of a few
individual objects. Their susceptibility to be affected by the scenes
presented to their view is likewise exalted by the confinement of their
voyage; they are enraptured with the novelty of everything about them,
by the voluptuousness of the climate and the abundance of delicious
fruits, and always afterwards recur to the scenes of their tropical
visit with an excited imagination.
In countries near the equator, many plants which are herbs in our
latitude assume arborescent forms. Such are the Tree-Grasses, which form
impenetrable forests, equalling some of the Fir woods of the North in
extent, if not in beauty and grandeur. In this part of the world we know
the Ferns only as a low herbaceous tribe of plants, consisting of mere
fronds rising out of the ground. We admire them for their beautifully
compounded leaves, and their colors of red, orange, and russet that
variegate our meadows in June, their garlands of verdure upon the rocky
hills in winter, and the profusion of their frondage in the shady glens
in summer. But in certain parts of the equatorial zone the Ferns put
off the humble guise in which they appear at the North. They no longer
associate with the lowly Violet, allowing themselves to be crowded by
the Hellebore and overtopped by the Meadow Rue; but they rear their
branches aloft and assume the dignity and stature of trees. Man, who
looks down upon them in our own latitude, and tramples them under
his feet, looks in that region far above his head, and beholds their
magnificent fronds spread out like a great tent between him and the
heavens.
Tree-Ferns, though confined principally to the equatorial zone, are
unable to endure the heat of the plains. They occupy an elevation that
affords them the continual temperature of spring, three thousand feet
above the sea,--the region of the lowest stratum of clouds,--where they
receive the benefit of their moisture before it descends to the earth
in showers. Humboldt ranks them with the noblest forms of tropical
vegetation,--less lofty than the Palms, but surpassing them in beauty of
foliage. The arborescent Ferns and Grasses are true specimens of those
plants, of simple organic structure, which are found in the fossil
remains of the early geological periods, and are the only plants now
extant which may be considered the representatives of that epoch, when
the saurians and the mastodons held dominion over the earth, and before
the Angel of Light had descended from heaven to make preparation for a
higher race of beings.
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