COPYRIGHT, ASAHEL CURTIS
Ships loading lumber at one of Portland's large mills.
III.
THE FORESTS
By HAROLD DOUGLAS LANGILLE
As the lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the element of water at all, so even in his richest parks and avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways of life where there is contracted room. The various action of trees, rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacial winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand the difficult slopes, gliding in grave procession over the heavenward ridges—nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland forest.—Ruskin: "Modern Painters."