A Walk from London to John O'Groat's / With Notes by the Way

by Elihu Burritt

The best English that can be given of these words we have in our translation: “Blessed is he who, passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well.” Why so? On what ground? If a man had settled down in that valley for life, there would have been no merit in his making it a well. It might, in that case, have been an act of lean-hearted selfishness on his part. Further than this, a man might have done it who could have had the heart to wall it in from the reach of thirsty travellers. No such man was meant in the blessing; nor any man resident in or near the valley. It was he who was “passing through” it, and who stopped, not to search for a dribbling vein of water to satisfy his own momentary thirst, but to make a well, broad and deep, after the oriental circumference, at which all future travellers that way might drink with gladness. That was the man on whom the blessing rested as a condition, not as a wish. Look at the word, and get the right meaning of it. It is [HEBREW WORD], not [HEBREW WORD]; it is a blessedness, not a benediction. It means a permanent reality of happiness, like that of Obededom, not a cheap “I thank you!” or “the Lord bless you!” from here and there a man or woman who appreciates the benefaction.

And he deserves the same who, “passing through” the short years of man’s life here on earth, plants trees like the living, lofty columns of this long cathedral aisle. How unselfish and generous is this gift to coming generations! How inestimable in its value and surpassing the worth of wealth!—surpassing the measurement of gold and silver! From my seat here, I look up to the magnificent frontage of that baronial palace. I see its towers, turrets and minarets; its grand and sculptured gateways and portals through this long, leaf-arched aisle. Not forty, but nearer four hundred years, doubtless, was that pile in building. Architecture of the pre-Norman period, and of all subsequent or cognate orders, diversifies the tastes and shapings of the structure. Suppose the whole should take fire to-night and burn to the ground. The wealth of the owner could command genius, skill and labor enough to rebuild it in three years, perhaps in one. The Czar of all the Russias did as large a thing once as this last, in the reconstruction of a palace. Perhaps the building is insured for its positive value, and the insurance money would erect a better one. But lift an axe upon that tall centurion of these templed elms. Cut through the closely-grained rings that register each succeeding year of two centuries. Hear the peculiar sounding of the heart-strokes, when the lofty, well-poised structure is balancing itself, and quivering through every fibre and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman’s steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher’s axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; the frightened flight of leaves and dust, and all the other distractions of that hour of death and destruction. Look upon that ruin! The wealth, genius and labor that could build a hundred Windsor Castles, and rebuild all the cathedrals of England in a decade, could not rebuild in two centuries that elm to the life and stature you levelled to the dust in two hours.

Put, then, the man who plants trees for posterity with him who, “passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well.” Put him under the same blessing of his kind, for he deserves it. He gives them the richest earthly gift that a man can give to a coming generation. In a practical sense, he gives them time. He gives them a whole century, as an extra. If they would pay a gold sovereign for every solid inch of oak, they could not hire one built to the stature of one of these trees in less than two centuries’ time, though they dug about it and nursed it as the man did the vine in Scripture. Blessed be the builders of these living temples of Nature! Blessed be the man, rich or poor, old or young, especially the old, who sets his heart and hand to this cheap but sublime and priceless architecture.

Let connoisseurs who have seen Memphis, Nineveh, Athens, Rome, or any or all of the great cities of the East, ancient or modern, come and sit here, and look at this lofty corridor, and mark the orders and graces of its architecture. What did the Ptolemies, their predecessors or successors in Egypt, or sovereigns of Chaldaic names, in Assyria, or ambitious builders in the ages of Pericles or Augustus, in Greece or Rome? Their structures were the wonders of the world. Mighty men they were, whose will was law, whose subjects worked it out to its wildest impulse without a murmur or a reward. But who built this sixty-columned temple, and bent these lofty arches? Two or three centuries ago, two men in coarse garb, and, it may be, in wooden shoes, came here with a donkey, bearing on its back a bundle of little elms, each of a finger’s girth. They came with the rude pick and spade of that time; and, in the first six working hours of the day, they dug thirty holes on this side of the aisle, and planted in them half the tiny trees of their bundle. They then sat down at noon to their bread and cheese and, most likely, a mug of ale, and talked of small, home matters, just as if they were dibbling in a small patch of wheat or potatoes. They then went to work again and planted the other row; and, as the sun was going down, they straightened their backs, and, with hands stayed upon their hips, looked up and down the two lines and thought they would pass muster and please the master. Then they shouldered their brightened tools and went home to their low, dark cottages, discussing the prices of bread, beer and bacon, and whether the likes of them could manage to keep a pig and make a little meat in the year for themselves.

That is the story of this most magnificent structure to which you look up with such admiration. Those two men in smock frocks, each with a pocket full of bread and cheese, were the Michael Angelos of this lofty St. Peter’s. That donkey, with its worn panniers, was the only witness and helper of their work. And it was the work of a day! They may have been paid two English shillings for it. The little trees may have cost two shillings more, if taken from another estate. The donkey’s day was worth sixpence. O, wooden-shoed Ptolemies! what a day’s work was that for the world! They thought nothing of it—nothing more than they would of transplanting sixty cabbages. They most likely did the same thing the next day, and for most of the days of that year, and of the next year, until all these undulating acres were planted with trees of every kind that could grow in these latitudes. How cheap, but priceless, is the gift of such trees to mankind! What a wealth, what a glory of them can even a poor, laboring man give to a coming generation! They are the most generous crops ever sown by human hands. All others the sower reaps and garners into his own personal enjoyment; but this yields its best harvest to those who come after him. This is a seeding for posterity. From this well of Baca shall they draw the cooling luxury of the gift when the hands that made it shall have gone to dust.

And this is a good place and time to think of home—of what we begin to hear called by her younger children, Old New England. Trees with us have passed through the two periods specified by Solomon—“a time to plant and a time to pluck up.” The last came first and lasted for a century. Trees were the natural enemies to the first settlers, and ranked in their estimation with the wild Indians, wolves and bears. It was their first, great business to cut them down, both great and small. Forests fell before the woodman’s axe. It made clean work, and seldom spared an oak or an elm. But, at the end of a century, the people relented and felt their mistake. Then commenced “the time to plant;” first in and around cities like Boston, Hartford, and New Haven, then about villages and private homesteads. Tree-planting for use and ornament marks and measures the footsteps of our civilization. The present generation is reaping a full reward of this gift to the next. Every village now is coming to be embowered in this green legacy to the future; like a young mother decorating a Christmas-tree for her children. Towns two hundred years old are taking the names of this diversified architecture, and they glory in the title. New Haven, with a college second to none on the American Continent, loves to be called “The Elm City,” before any other name. This generous and elevating taste is making its way from ocean to ocean, even marking the sites of towns and villages before they are built. I believe there is an act of the Connecticut Legislature now in force, which allows every farmer a certain sum of money for every tree he plants along the public roadside of his fields. The object of this is to line all the highways of the State with ornamental trees, so that each shall be a well-shaded avenue. What a gift to another generation that simple act is intended to make! What a world of wonder and delight will our little State be to European travellers and tourists of the next century, if this measure shall be carried out! If a few miles of such avenues as Burghley Park and Chatsworth present, command such admiration, what sentiments would a continuous avenue of trees of equal size from Hartford to New Haven inspire!

While on this line of reflection, I will mention a case of monumental tree-planting in New England, not very widely known there. A small town, in the heart of Massachusetts, was stirred to the liveliest emotion, with all the rest in her borders, by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Different communities expressed their sense of the importance of this event in different ways, most of which were noisy and excited. But the good people of this rural parish came together, and, at a happy suggestion from some one of their number, agreed to spend the day in planting trees to commemorate the momentous transaction. They forthwith set to work, young and old, and planted first a double row on each side of the walk from the main road up “The Green” to their church door; then a row on each side of the public highway passing through the village, for nearly a mile in each direction. There was a blessed day’s work for them, their children and children’s children. Every hand that wielded a spade, or held up a treelet until its roots were covered with earth, has long since lost its cunning; but the tall, green monuments they erected to the memory of the most momentous day in American history, stand in unbroken ranks, the glory of the village.

Although America will never equal England, probably, in compact and picturesque “plantations,” or “woods,” covering hundreds of acres, all planted by hand, our shade-trees will outnumber hers, and surpass them in picturesque distribution and arrangement, when our popular programme is fully carried out. In two or three important particulars, we have a considerable advantage over this country in respect to this tasteful embellishment. In the first place, all the farmers in America own the lands they cultivate, and, on an average, two sides of every farm front upon a public road. Two or three days’ work suffices for planting a row of trees the whole length of this frontage, or the roadside of the farmer’s fence or wall. This is being done more and more extensively from year to year, generally under the influence of public taste and custom, and sometimes under the stimulus of governmental compensation, as in Connecticut. Thus, in the life of the present generation, all our main roads and cross-roads may become arched and shaded avenues, giving the whole landscape of the country an aspect which no other land will present.

Then we have another great advantage which England can never attain until she learns how to consume her coal smoke. Our wood and anthracite fires make no smoke to retard the growth or blacken the foliage of our trees. Thus we may have them in standing armies, tall and green, lining the streets, and overtopping the houses of our largest cities; filtering with their wholesome leafage the air breathed by the people. New Haven and Cleveland are good specimens of beautifully-shaded towns.

There is a third circumstance in our favor as yet, and of no little value. The grand old English oak and elm are magnificent trees, in park or hedge-row here. The horse-chestnut, lime, beech and ash grow to a size that you will not see in America. The Spanish chestnut, a larger and coarser tree than our American, reaches an enormous girth and spread. The pines, larches and firs abound. Then there are tree-hunters exploring all the continents, and bringing new species from Japan and other antipodean countries. But as yet, our maples have never been introduced; and without these the tree-world of any country must ever lack a beautiful feature, both in spring, summer and autumn, especially in the latter. Our autumnal scenery without the maple, would be like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out; or like a royal court without a queen. Few Americans, even loudest in its praise, realise how much of the glory of our Indian summer landscape is shed upon it by this single tree. At all the Flower Shows I have seen in England and France, I have never beheld a bouquet so glorious and beautiful as a little islet in a small pellucid lake in Maine, filled to the brim, and rounded up like a full-blown rose, with firs, larches, white birches and soft maples, with a little sprinkling of the sumach. An early frost had touched the group with every tint of the rainbow, and there it stood in the ruddy glow of the Indian summer, looking at its face in the liquid mirror that smiled, still as glass, under its feet.