THE RIVER MAPLE.
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.