Chapter V.
PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME.
A large portion of the newly-inclosed land belonged to Sir Henry Withers, whose plantations were celebrated in verse, as we have seen, in company with Mr. Malton’s fields. Sir Henry had had a world of trouble in laying his plans about these plantations; for, in addition to the discontents of the people about the common, he had met with opposition from other quarters. Every arable cultivator grumbled over Malton’s pastures and Withers’s woods by turns. Every shepherd looked upon every spot occupied by a tree as so much food taken from his flock. Sir Henry’s bailiff himself could not bear to see a rood of ground that was worth any thing for other purposes devoted to planting, and was continually offering his advice as to how much should be taken in, and how large a sweep the fences should make. If his master had followed his advice, his plantations would not only have made a very extraordinary zig-zag patchwork, but the expense of fencing round so many odd angles would have exceeded the saving in good land; to say nothing of the advantage lost to the trees planted in a poor soil by having none of the protection of more flourishing neighbours. Sir Henry and his forester laughed together at the idea of having his plantations look like an assortment of pincushions, and of rearing a mile of fence where half a mile would do, for the sake of saving a few acres more for the plough. These two carried their point against all the little world of Brooke; and the future woods were appointed to sweep round the foot of this hill, to retire into yonder hollow, to wave on the top of that healthy slope, and to shelter from the north winds all this expanse of corn-fields. It was a delight to the imagination to picture what they would be a hundred years hence, when hanging woods would ornament a landscape at present bare and barren.
It was partly this pleasure, and partly the activity of the scene, which made us love to watch the process of planting. The inclosing was the first work; and we were for some time in dread that stone walls would be the kind of fence fixed upon, as the soil was too poor for a quickset hedge, considering the great extent to which it must have been carried; and fences of furze and larch would have required too much attention in the neighbourhood of such large flocks of sheep as Mr. Malton’s. Sir Henry, however, could not tolerate the idea of stone walls any more than ourselves, and determined to construct an earthen fence which might last for nine or ten years, by which time the thinnings of the plantations might provide a substitute. A ditch was dug, sloping outwards but presenting a straight cut of a foot and a half next the plantation, on the verge of which was raised a wall of sods, three or four feet high, round the top of which ran a single bar of paling.
The next operation was to drain those portions of the soil which required it—a trouble and expense which, though great at first, becomes less and less burdensome every year; since, if the drains are properly kept open and scoured, so that the water may remain pure enough to nourish the trees, it will be gradually absorbed by them, so as to turn a swampy into a firm soil. The marking out of the road and paths was done at the same time with the draining, as one ditch served to drain the road on one side and the plantation on the other. This part of the work was the most agreeable of all to lookers-on, and to a man of taste like Sir Henry, who saw how much of the use and beauty of his woods depended on this part of his plan. He pointed out with delight how air would be conducted into the recesses of the groves by these pathways; and how the road, now barely marked out with the spade, would soon become a dry green sward, where the fellings of the woods would be hereafter collected, and where their owner might go to and fro to watch how his forest nurslings throve.
Our next curiosity was to know what trees Sir Henry meant to plant the most of. There were to be oaks, of course; but a far greater proportion of larch. “Larch! Ugly, mean-looking larch!” we exclaimed; and went on to rail against its appearance when planted in small patches, or on the ridge of a hill, or sloping away from the wind. But Sir Henry told us that if we had seen forests of larch we should have had a very different idea of its beauty. He had been in Switzerland; and he described to us the sublimity of the woods there, where the mountains are clothed with larch as high as any vegetation can stretch, and where the tender green of its young shoots in spring is as beautiful as its sober autumn shade is grand. To comfort us under our complaints that we were never likely to look upon Swiss mountains, he told us that we need go no farther than Scotland to see what a forest of larches might be made. He owned, however, that he had regarded use more than beauty in his choice of the larch. This tree grows better on exposed and poor soils than in rich and sheltered situations;—not so fast, certainly; but its timber is of a better texture, and it is free from blight. The oak and ash, therefore, were planted on the best parts of Sir Henry’s grounds; and the rest was given up to the larch, which was expected to grow more rapidly than all the trees of the forest besides, to furnish wood as tough and durable as that of the oak, and moreover to improve the quality of the ground as rapidly and effectually as could be done by any other process. By the annual casting of its leaves, the larch enriches the soil beneath as with a regular supply of manure. The coarse heath gradually disappears, and the finer grasses spring up, till a larch wood becomes, from being a barren moor, a pasture land carpeted with white clover: a wonderful change to take place without any assistance from human labour beyond that of putting larch plants into the ground. The plantation may be used as pasture without injury to the young trees, after a ten years’ growth; and hence arise other advantages,—shade to the flock in summer, warmth in winter, and shelter from the storm. What wonder that Sir Henry planted many larches!
Few rural employments are more interesting to the by-stander than that of planting. I have stood for hours with my brothers, watching the people at their work. First a labourer took off with his spade about a foot of turf, and laid it aside, while he dug the pit, and broke the clods, and loosened the soil near. Then his wife, if he had one, or his boy, placed the plant, just brought from the nursery, in the earth, and spread the roots abroad in their natural direction, taking especial care not to twist or bruise the tender fibres which draw nourishment from the soil. Then the pit was filled up; the earth being first gently sprinkled over the roots, and afterwards turned in and trodden down. The turf was next cut in two with the spade and laid upside down on each side of the plant, so as to meet round its stem. The purpose of reversing the turf is that the nursling may not be affected by drought, or injured by the growth of grass or weeds close beside it. We were sure never to be long at any one spot without seeing either Sir Henry or his forester, who were always going their rounds among the labourers. They told us that no one thing is so much to be dreaded in the work of plantation as slovenliness in putting the plants into the ground; and as it was impossible to convince the labourers of all the mischief of bruising or twisting the roots, there was nothing for it but keeping an eye upon them continually, to see that they did not make more haste than good speed. For this reason, planting was not in the present case, as in too many, done by contract; but even here, where the labourers were paid by the day, they were apt to grow impatient and think it foolish to fiddle-faddle about the root-fibres of a tree as carefully as about the tender organs of an infant. They made many attempts, too, in order to save trouble, to bring more plants at a time from the nursery than they could set before night: but the forester having once found half-a-dozen covered over in a ditch during a frost, made such vehement complaints, that thenceforward the nurslings were removed as they were wanted and in security.
I began this winter by admiring Sir Henry’s benevolence to future generations more than I saw reason to do afterwards. I imagined that he would reap none of the fruits of his present outlay of trouble and capital, and that all that he did in planting was for the sake of his children and his country. He did consider both. He was well aware of the value of an ample supply of timber to a nation like ours, whose naval resources can never be too plentiful, and whose magnificent works of art create a perpetual demand for the treasures of the forest. He was mindful, also, of the vast increase to the value of his estates which he might provide by planting his inferior lands; but, with all this, he hoped, as it was fair he should, that his own revenues would be improved by the same means, perhaps before he had passed the middle of life. I was present one day when he was pointing out to my father the difference in his mode of planting two portions of land, and the comparative profit he expected to receive in a few years.
“These fifty acres, you observe,” said he, “are not for pasturage, though you see two larches to one oak. Half the larches are to remain for timber trees; the other half are nurses, and will be thinned out in five or six years.”
“O dear!” interrupted I, “before they are large enough to be of any use.”