Those who have only lived in forest countries, where vast tracts are
shaded by a dense growth of oak, ash, chestnut, hickory, and other trees
of deciduous foliage, which present the most pleasing varieties of
verdure and freshness, can have but little idea of the effect produced
on the feelings by aged forests of pine, composed in great degree of a
single species, whose towering summits are crowned with one dark-green
canopy, which successive seasons find unchanged, and nothing but death
causes to vary. Their robust and gigantic trunks rise a hundred or more
feet high in purely proportioned columns before the limbs begin to
diverge; and their tops, densely clothed with long, bristling foliage,
intermingle so closely as to allow of but slight entrance to the sun.
Hence the undergrowth of such forests is comparatively slight and thin,
since none but shrubs and plants that love the shade can flourish under
this perpetual exclusion of the animating and invigorating rays of the
great exciter of the vegetable world. Through such forests, and by the
merest foot-paths in great part, it was my lot to pass many miles almost
every day; and had I not endeavored to derive some amusement and
instruction from the study of the forest itself, my time would have been
as fatiguing to me as it was certainly quiet and solemn. But wherever
Nature is, and under whatever form she may present herself, enough is
always proffered to fix attention and to produce pleasure, if we will
condescend to observe with carefulness. I soon found that even a
pine-forest was far from being devoid of interest.