By far the most graceful tree of this genus is the River Maple, to which
the cockneyish epithet of “silver” is applied, from the whitish under
surface of its leaves. It is not found in the woods near Boston, but is
a favorite shade-tree in all parts of New England. It abounds in the
Connecticut Valley and on the banks of some of the rivers in Maine. It
is rather slender in its habit, with very long branches, that droop
considerably in old and full-grown trees. The foliage of this tree is
dull and whitish, but it hangs so loosely as to add grace to the flowing
negligence of its long slender branches. The leaves are very deeply
cleft, like those of the scarlet oak, so that at a considerable distance
they resemble fringe; but they are seldom very highly tinted in autumn.
THE DARK PLAINS
CONTAINING MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF A FOREST.
In our early days, when all the scenes about us are full of mysteries,
and even the adjoining country is an unexplored region, we feel the
liveliest impressions from nature and our own imagination. Those who
pass their childhood in the woods, and become acquainted with their
inconveniences and their dangers, learn to regard them as something to
be avoided. The Western pioneer destroys immense tracts of forest to
make room for agriculture and space for his buildings. The inhabitant of
the town, on the contrary, sees the woods only on occasional visits, for
pleasure or recreation, and acquires a romantic affection for them and
their scenes, unfelt by the son of the pioneer or the forester. The
earliest period of my life was passed in a village some miles distant
from an extensive wood, which was associated in my mind with many
interesting objects, from the infrequency of my visits. It was at a very
early age, and when I first began to feel some interest in natural
objects beyond my own home, that I heard my mother describe the “Dark
Plains,” a spacious tract of sandy country, covered with a primitive
growth of pines and hemlocks, such as are now seen only in the solitudes
of Canada and the northern part of Maine.
The very name of this wooded region is highly significant and poetical,
and far removed from the disagreeable character of names vulgarly given
to remarkable places. What eccentric person, among the unpoetic society
of Puritans and pedlers, could have felt sufficient reverence for Nature
to apply to one of her scenes a name that should not either degrade it
or make it ridiculous! The very sound of this name sanctifies the place
to our imagination; and it is one of the very few applied to natural
objects, if the original Indian appellation has been lost, that is not
either vulgar or silly. Nothing can be more solemn or suggestive,
nothing more poetical or impressive, than the name of this remarkable
forest.
I attached a singular mystery to this region of Dark Plains. When I
first heard the words spoken, they brought to mind all that I have since
found so delightful in the green solitudes of nature,—their twilight at
noonday; their dark sombre boughs and foliage, full of sweet sounds from
unknown birds, whose voices are never heard in the garden and orchard;
the indistinct moaning of winds among their lofty branches, like a storm
brewing in the distant horizon, sublime from its seeming distance and
indistinctness, though not loud enough to disturb the melody of thrushes
and sylvias. All these things had been described to me by her to whom I
looked, in that early time of life, for all knowledge and the solution
of all mysteries. I had never visited a wood of great extent, and the
Dark Plains presented to my imagination a thousand indefinable ideas of
beauty and grandeur.
It has often been said that the style of the interior arches of a Gothic
cathedral was indicated by the interlacing and overarching boughs of the
trees as they meet over our heads in a path through the woods. I think
also that the solemnity of its dark halls and recesses, caused by the
multiplicity of arches and the pillars that support them, closely
resembles that of the interior of a forest; and that the genius of the
original architect must have been inspired by the contemplation of those
grand woods that pervaded the greater part of Europe in the Middle Ages.
The solemn services of the Roman Catholic religion found a people whose
imagination having been stimulated by their druidical rites looked upon
these wonderful temples as transcending nature in grandeur; and they
bowed before the Cross with still greater devotion than they had felt
when they made sacrifices under the oak.
There is an indefinable charm in a deep wood, even before we have
learned enough to people it with nymphs and dryads and other mythical
beings. Groups of trees that invite us to their shade and shelter, in
our childhood, on a sultry summer noon, yield us a foretaste of their
sensible comfort; and a fragment of wild wood, if we see nothing more
spacious, with its cawing crows, its screaming jays, and its few wild
quadrupeds, gives us some conception of the immensity of a pathless
forest that never yet resounded with the woodman’s axe. I was already
familiar with these vestiges of nature’s greatness, enough to inspire me
with feelings that do not become very definite until the mind is
matured.
The time had come at last when I was to visit one of these solemn
temples of the gods. I was between eight and nine years of age, and was
to accompany my parents on a journey from Beverly to Concord, my
mother’s native town, in New Hampshire. I give this narrative of
personal experience, to prove that our love of nature is an innate
feeling, which is exalted, but not created, by the imagination. Nothing
ever occupied my mind so intensely as the thought of visiting these Dark
Plains. Other objects seen on our journey were amusing and attractive;
but this wood was the only one that excited in me a passionate interest.
All my thoughts were obscure and indefinite, associated with some dreary
conceptions of beauty and grandeur; for in our early years we aspire
after more exalted feelings than the common scenes of Nature can awaken.
When at length we entered upon the road that led through this forest,
the sweetest music had never held me so completely entranced as when I
looked up to these lofty trees, extending their branches beyond my ken,
with foliage too dense for the sun to penetrate, and all the mysterious
accompaniments of the wood, its silence and darkness, its moanings and
its echoes. I watched the scenes as we rode slowly by them,—the immense
pillars that rose out of a level plain, strewed with brown foliage, and
interspersed with a few bushes and straggling vines; the dark summits of
the white pines that rose above the round heads of the other species
which were the prevailing timber; the twilight that pervaded these woods
even at high noon; and I thought of their seemingly boundless extent, of
their mysterious solitude, and their unspeakable beauty. Certain
religious enthusiasts speak of a precise moment when they feel a certain
change that places them in communication with Heaven. If one is ever in
a similar manner baptized with the love of nature, it was at this moment
I felt that hidden influence which, like the first emotion of love,
binds the heart with an unceasing devotion.
I did not at this early age examine individual objects. Yet now and then
the note of some solitary bird, or the motions of a squirrel on the
outer trees of the wood, held my attention while I was absorbed in a
revery of delight. An occasional clearing, containing a cottage with its
rustic appendages, opened the sunshine into our path, and made the wood
cheerful by this pleasant contrast. When at length we emerged from this
gloomy region into the brightness and cheerfulness of the open country,
I still dwelt upon the quiet grandeur of its solitudes, and have never
forgotten the impressions I had received from them, nor the passionate
interest awakened in me before my journey.
About thirty years afterwards I revisited this wood, and traversed the
greater part of it, accompanied by an old friend of the generation that
had passed before me. From him I learned that the original growth of
timber had been mostly felled, and a second growth of inferior height
and dimensions occupied its place. He pointed out to me how the whole
character of the wood was changed by the simple act of felling the
primitive trees. The ground was not so wet as formerly; the standing
waters did not occupy so wide a space; the forest contained more
openings, the barren elevations not having been supplied with a new
growth of trees. In the place of them were a few scrub oaks, some
whortleberry-bushes, and other native shrubs; the trees were smaller,
and there was a greater predominance of pitch-pine in all the more sandy
parts of the tract, and numerous white birches had sprung up among them.
“Such is the change,” he remarked, “which is gradually taking place over
the whole continent.” He seemed to regret this change, and thought the
progress of the civilized arts, though it rendered necessary the
clearing of the greater part of the wooded country, ought not to be
attended with such universal devastation. Some spacious wood ought to
remain, in every region, in which the wild animals would be protected,
and where we might view the grounds as they appeared when the wild
Indian was lord of this continent. Even at that time I found some acres
of forest which had been unmolested still retaining those grand, wild,
and rugged features that entitled the region to the poetic name of Dark
Plains.