which they never can, where custom keeps | ney, to attain the attribute of grandeur. classes apart. Au reste, aristocratic habits So, again, the shores of the great Amermake way in America as elsewhere, and the system of separate compartments in railway carriages is gradually introduced near the centres of traffic. ican lakes are in general utterly deficient both in beauty and picturesqueness; like mere bits of tame sea-coast, the opposite side being seldom visible: but we know But I am only indulging in a few discur- that these lakes contain the greatest masses sive remarks, suggested by the memories of fresh water anywhere to be found on the of pleasant hours passed amidst American | earth, and we respect them, not according scenery, and not lecturing on American to the verdict of our eyes, but according to manners and customs. As I have said, I what we remember to have read of them in hold it necessary, in passing judgment of geographical dictionaries. Or, again, if comparison, to eliminate from my estimate you take your stand on some abrupt Cana great variety of indirect impressions which adian height, such as are scattered along we habitually derive from the contempla- the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Ottion of fine landscape — impressions so tawa, and look to the north, beyond those closely allied with those of the picturesque, huge rivers, your eye rests everywhere alike properly so called, as to be unavoidably on a billowy sea of leaves, varied but by classed together with them in our minds, the tall skeletons of pines, here in groups although their origin and real significance and there single, which the lumberers have are different. That which appeals to the left, towering to twice the height of the orimagination in scenery is, strictly speaking, dinary forest trees. There is, no doubt, a not picturesque; but that is picturesque certain gloomy grandeur in the prospect, which appeals to the eye alone, or at least considered only as it affects the eye; but it primarily, and pleases by what it presents, is to association that the scene owes its real not by what it suggests. Now, in America, power to captivate us. We know that those the first notions which fasten themselves on tributary rivers which gleam here and there the mind, in contemplating the scenes in the distance come from an unknown land; which men in general desire chiefly to be- their course is unmapped, and their springs hold and cherish chiefly in their recollec- undiscovered: those dark chains of hills, tion, are those of mere vastness. But the which here and there interrupt the wide grandeur of mere vastness arises simply, in uniformity of surface, are unexplored, or the great majority of instances, from the only touched by the hunter and the woodimagination of the viewer. That which man. Ask their names of the inhabitant strikes and overawes us is not what we see, of the clearing, and he can only tell you but the ulterior ideas suggested by what that he has never heard of any: they are we see. A western prairie, viewed as it terra incognita, within view of thriving generally must be with little advantage of cities. And those woods which cover hill height, is certainly not grander than Salis- and plain alike fill, no doubt, a large space bury Plain, and certainly far less so than to your eyes, but how much vaster to your the Campagna of Rome, with its encircling fancy! For you know that, beyond the outline of exquisite mountain forms. It is first narrow fringe of scattered clearing, the fact that it is a prairie - part of a vast they extend unbroken, tree behind tree, rolling series of the same which extends until Nature denies farther sustenance to from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Moun- her aborescent progeny, and they die out tains, which is already attracting to its in plains of moss and rock on the shores of "womb immeasurable, and infinite breast," Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Ocean. army after army of hungry immigrants, and will continue to do so until it shall have become the seat of human industry and human luxury, to an extent which the world has as yet never witnessed: it is this which causes the little round table of green earth, visible around us as we jour Again, in one feature of what I may term the imaginative picturesque, common and recognised among ourselves, the American landscape is from the necessity of the case entirely deficient; and though reason assures the observer that this deficiency is something accidental and immaterial to the main issue, there is a sentiment stronger | relic of the Norsemen; and, consequently, It must be admitted, also, while we are making the worst of the case against our own view, that the American landscape has other defects, as regards that attractiveness which arises from association, more characteristic and more unpleasing than the mere absence of objects familiar in other countries as graceful accompaniments of fine scenery. It is commonly said that the first impression of an American view (I speak of what is specially American, belonging to a new country, not of the home scenery of old settled parts) is melancholy. Why should this be so where the sense of novelty, and freshness, and hope, and the aspect of free and exulting nature seem specially to invite to cheerfulness? One reason I believe to be this that there is something depressing which jars on the feelings, in the aspect of a vast region in which the dominion of nature seems to be ceasing, her grandeur and her abundance rapidly disappearing, while the dominion of man is not yet established, nor his mission of improvement accomplished. There is a dreary vacuity between; a gloomy interval, from the falling of the curtain over the old world, to its rising over the new. Gaze upon the huge zone of woods which circles with its frontier belt the lands occupied by man beyond the Alleghanies and on the St. Lawrence; the mightier trees, the older denizens of the forest, have almost all disappeared; they have been cleared away by the woodman: only a few scattered specimens are left, such as the tall, meagre skeletons of the white pine, which dot the landscape, rising far above the deciduous trees, all along the limits of the cultivated land of Canada; the rest consists now mostly of under-growth, or inferior specimens, not worth removal, left to struggle and perish together. Moreover, the mere partial clearing of a forest is found to admit into it great rushes of wind, which devastate it far and wide; and much greater destruction is occasioned by the casual fires occasioned by settlers. Of บ can scenery may, however, be held to sayour of fastidious over-refinement, or, at best to be little more than sentimentality, and not capable of being seized by art, or conveyed to the ear in language of precise description. Let us look a little more closely and "realistically," as the phrase now runs, at the features of New World landscape, which may be deemed most obviously characteristic, and resembling or differing from those of our own. course there are districts very differently circumstanced as to sylvan riches: I am only speaking now of the first and general effect. Man has destroyed, and has not yet replaced. Look, again, at those vast rivers, full and majestic, clear and brown as amber, or blue from their lake reservoirs, sweeping through this world of trees, and encircling with their waves fairy archipelagoes of tufted islets; they seem as if they ought to swarm with fish, and only a few years ago they did so; their waters are Of mountain scenery, in every variety, generally lifeless now. Wherever the saw- the Union, within its now extended limits, mills ply their trade these discharge all possesses enough and to spare. But, speaktheir sawdust into the current whose water- ing of the region east of the Mississippi only, power they employ. The deleterious mat- the mountains are of second-rate order and ter is not swept bodily away by the stream, minor attractions. Between Mount Washbut gathers in the eddies, clings to the ington, in New Hampshire (6,200 feet — shores, forms shoals in the shallow parts, they are actually making a railway to the clogs the gills of the fish, who soon desert top of it), and Mount Mitchell, in North waters thus infected, and leave them desti- Carolina (6,500), which pass for the two tute of their natural inhabitants. As re- highest, there intervenes a great multitude gards animals of the higher orders, it is un- of summits, reaching from three to five necessary to call attention to their fate; it thousand feet; attaining, therefore, reshas been vainly deplored by naturalists and pectable, though not conspicuous altitude, romancers until the subject is a stale one. and rising, more or less gradually from the The game first falls a prey to the specula-rolling country," which commonly extends tive pot-shooting of the savage and the to their bases. For the abrupt contrast bebackwoodsman, then to the restless energy tween precipitous mountain side and level of the sportsman, finally, where it is suffi- plain at the foot, characteristic of great upcient for the purpose in the number and heavels, such as those of the Alps and Pyremagnitude of the victims, to that last and nees, is not ordinarily met with in America. most ignoble product of our civilisation, These ranges are divided by great river the mere lust of slaughter, which leads gaps and differ in geological character; but those possessed with it to roam over conti- there is a general monotony in their outlines nents, destroying, merely to load the earth-long, undulating, billowy swells of highwith piles of useless carcasses of slain land. Not only do they lack the grandeur creatures, and note down in books the of the greater European ranges, and the amount of slaughter perpetrated. The In- fantastic outlines of the Sierra, but they dians, like their game, have perished from seldom exhibit the broken form which we off the land; the white man, with his flocks have come to consider as appertaining to and herds, has not yet fully taken posses- mountains in general, even of inferior order, sion of their inheritance. It adds greatly, such as those of Cumberland and North as I have said, to the feelings of monoto- Wales. It is rarely that the eye fastens on nous sadness which such a prospect some- a slope of bald rock; the inclines are almost times excites, to reflect that these vast re- invariably such as to admit of a thick covergions are almost untenanted by the dwellers ing of vegetation. Among such European for whom they seem adapted, and who so parallels as I have seen, those which most lately enjoyed them, while as yet but ill-nearly resemble the American are the ranges prepared for the reception of their successors; a land, as it were, without form and void a silent, sleeping chaos between two creations. To get beyond this belt of transition country, and become intimate with unspoilt nature, the traveller must now-a-days wander far a-field westward, beyond the limits of the forest zone, or into the depths of the dense wilderness still left in the neglected South, or northward, until the trees themselves begin to grow stunted, in the region beyond Lake Superior. These criticisms on the genius of Ameri of Central Germany, the Harz, Böhmerwald, Erzgebirge, Black Forest, rounded and swelling in contours, and forest-covered almost everywhere. The Alleghany ranges display, however, in other parts, forms more resembling the long, mural slopes of the Jura. Of course, under these circumstances, some important elements of the picturesque must be deemed wanting; and yet there is a peculiar grandeur, unlike what we are accustomed to elsewhere, in the aspect of the Green Mountains of Vermont, for instance, or the Adirondacks of New York, where they crown the horizon of some enor-, mous view, the eye being led up to them, as it were, by long, curling ridges of inferior hills, standing out in the hard dry blue of that peculiar atmosphere, neither English nor South European. They are visible enough, on a clear day, from that height which commands one of the most singular and beautiful prospects anywhere to be found, "La Montagne," above Montreal; but almost too distant for scenic effect. that rain falls off, and rivers dry up in consequence of clearing. Such speculations seem wonderfully far-fetched when we examine the facts with our own eyes. But, generally, when an American laments over the neglect and decay of the woods in his district, he only means that valuable timber for the market is becoming scarce; if understood more widely, the complaint would be quite unreasonable. All around the various ranges of mountains of which I have spoken Of course these mountain ranges are cov- may therefore be described in a general way ered from base to summit, everywhere alike, as unbroken forest, or interrupted only, eswith the same grand, solemn, unvarying pecially towards the North, by myriads of forest. Nothing impresses the traveller gleaming lakes. Wherever trees are not, half so forcibly, in Atlantic America and earth seems to bear nothing but grass. nearly as far as the Mississippi, as the uni- There is an entire absence distressing to form, almost overpowering presence of this the British, though not equally to the consea of leaves, to which our most extensive tinental pilgrim of our ordinary manywoodlands in Europe (speaking of those coloured carpetings for waste places; no covered wholly or chiefly with deciduous heath, unless I am mistaken, no broom, no trees, and omitting the pine forests of Rus- furze, no profusion of wild flowers, scarcely sia and Scandinavia) are no more than our any ground mosses. Ferns are rich, and nountain tarns to the great American lakes. abundant; but until they die in autumn, Nothing more contradicts his anticipations these produce no contrast of colours. All -I speak chiefly of my own, but I know is green alike, from the summit of Mount they were shared by others than the ex- Washington or Mount Marcy to the shores treme narrowness of the cleared space al- of the lakes whish nestle at their feet. We most everywhere. Nature seems to push speak habitually of England, and still more back her vigorous vegetation with almost la base, the removal in question being as yet far too fierce impatience over all once occupied insignificant to produce such an effect, even if it be spots, the moment the hand of man inter- thus producible. But what real evidence, or what mits its energy. The so-called exhausted sound scientific reason, have we in behalf of the supposition that the presence or absence of forests af lands of the Atlantic seaboard are recovering fects the amount of atmospheric precipitation, anyby degrees their vegetable soil, and becom-where at least in temperate climates? It is surpris ing how often generalizations are admitted in coming the homes of fresh and lusty self-planted mon talk as "notorious facts," when in truth we groves of many species, more vigorous to hardly stand on the threshold of our induction. the eye-though of course much younger the effect of woods in diminishing evaporation, and The question, be it observed, has nothing to do with than the patches of decaying virgin forest allowing the fallen water to percolate instead of still left uncleared beyond the Alleghanies. running off, so as to maintain a more equable It is said that the ravages of the great fire ter. The point at issue is whether, cæteris paribus, supply in the streams; that is quite another matof Miramichi, in 1826, which destroyed the more rain falls on a hundred acres of trees than a timber over six thousand square miles, were least refer those who may accuse me of paradox, to hundred acres of turnips, and if so, why. I may at practically repaired in twenty-five years. the very cautious language used by those who have Around Washington, hemmed in by woods really examined the subject by the aid of such meagre knowledge as we possess. Mr. George W. even more closely than the other great Marsh, a very painstaking American writer Mau cities, large tracts were stripped of trees and Nature, or Physical Geography as modified by during the operations of the civil war, in Human Activity"), sums up the evidence on both sides, and ends in uncertainty. In France, where, a order to deprive enemies of their cover. few years ago, there was something of a panic about This destruction took place only four or the diminution of rain through déboisement, observ ers seem working round to a contrary conclusion. five years ago, and already a beautiful, Foissac ("Météorologie") is quoted by Mr. Marsh as tangled wilderness of infant oak and chest-suggesting that forests even draw from the earth a nut and maple rises everywhere above the head of the foot-passenger. Men will make grievances out of the most unpromising material, and learned Americans choose to complain of the diminution of their forest surface,* and fancy When speculative writers go so far as to apply to North America the notion, so popular in Europe, that the removal of forests diminishes the amount of rain, I should suspect that their theory peche par quantity larger than the usual fall of rain. Belgrand (Annuaire de la Sociéteé Météorologique," 1853) carefully compared the rainfall in two neighbouring valleys in Burgundy, the one wooded, and the other bare, and found that less fell in the wooded one. And see the conclusion arrived at by M. Marié-Davy in his remarkable work, "Les Mouvemens de l'Atmosphère et des Mers." 1866. He infers from the whole mass of evidence at our command, such as it is, that there is no proof at all that rain has diminished in France together with the undoubted diminution of the wood; no reliable proof that the presence or absence of wood affects the rainfall in any particular locality. of Ireland, as surpassing in verdure; but no one can have a full idea of the effect produced on the eye by intense unrelieved greenness of sward and foliage, who has not visited North America, especially in early summer. So I say, in defiance of the paradox of Elihu Burritt, who holds that an English October is the greenest month of the greenest country, and that a rich surface of British turnips beats all the natural emerald of his own country. lantic side of North America, that the isothermal lines of climate run very close together, and the zones of temperature succeed each other rapidly; consequently, the vegetation is very differently timed in neighbouring districts. In our island, thanks to that convenient Gulf Stream which accounts for everything, or to whatever other cause may be the real one, there is comparative uniformity in this respect. Earliness or lateness of vegetation has more to do with varieties of exposure, soil, and elevation, than with the latitude. But in the States you may precede the spring, or keep in arrear of it, with a very small amount of locomotion. Two days will bring you from Virginia to Canada. You will leave the banks of the James River already blooming in early summer, and find nature on those of the St. Lawrence only just awaking from her long months of inactivity. The extreme beauty of colouring presented by the forests, especially of the Northern States, at the turning of the leaf, has struck the eyes of every traveller, and formed the subject of a thousand descriptions. Perhaps the nearest approach to it on this side of the Atlantic may be found in middle France, where the sun is brighter than with us, and the first autumn frosts bite sharper, and where there is a great variety of deciduous trees. Such a spectacle Examining a little closer the specialties of on a small scale, and doubtless by no means American forest physiognomy, and comparequally vivid, is presented by the forest of ing it with that familiar to us in the old Fontainebleau during a few days of Octo- continent, the observer is struck at once by ber.* But next to the hues of autumn in the curious manner in which Nature, as America, and, though far less gorgeous, if in sport, has blended similarity with difstill exquisitely lovely, are the fresh tints ference. I speak, of course, of the great of the few weeks of spring. Species after temperate zone in each, where the latitudes, species, in long and regular succession, for all general purposes, may be regarded puts forth its tender leaves, expands into as nearly corresponding, after the deduction youthful grace, and then into the full flush of ten degrees from the American amount of summer; and the hillsides are brilliant,-i.e., 50°— 40°-the Central States benot with separate specimens, but with a carpet of large patterns of different shades of early green; for, as a botanical traveller observes, "when any one species of a tree is met with, acres of the same are frequently seen together." In due season, this green is mixed with the rich white flowers of the dogwood, playing in the forest the part of the English hawthorn, with other varieties of colour, and with shrubs of similar class; and here and there with the flaming scarlet or rose tints assumed by the buds of some oaks and other kinds of trees, when about to burst. Later in the year, at the approach of summer, the rhododendron and azalea (bay and honeysuckle, in local language), and the kalmia (laurel), enamel for a few short weeks the underwoods of the Central States. Farther south, the tulip tree hangs out its parure of many-coloured flowers on its bright green vesture; and at last, beyond the Carolina frontier, shine out the richer glories of the magnolia. It is a well-known peculiarity of the At "It must be admitted that both the Northern and the Southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious colouring than most American travellers in Europe are willing to allow."-G. W. MARSH, Man and Nature. ing therefore taken as equivalents for northern France and the south of England. It must have been a strange feeling with which our first settlers explored a region so like in broad outline to that which they had left, so different in every detail. All our familiar trees are there oak, elm, beech, ash, birch, &c. The new-comers had no difficulty in assigning their names; only in a few instances have they altogether changed their application, tulip trees being called poplars, and so forth. But though the same, I suppose, as far as specific identity is concerned, almost every one varies from its antitype here, in so many particulars as to confound all notion of similarity. Those free-growing, tall, loose-made, straggling oaks and elms are utterly unlike our sturdy, compact trees of the same name in general aspect, and differ from them more or less in every minute characteristic. The first diversity which strikes the eye is, that the prevailing green tint of the foliage is far lighter than with us - lighter than on the continent of Europe, though there, in general, less sombre than in our islands. The leaves of the American varieties are for the most part larger, ranker in growth, and less clustered in close masses, the twigs |