THE FOREST.
All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests: gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf, the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by man: full of all its sublime grandeur—solemn, vast, and mysterious as forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur, leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys; running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in perennial perfection.
It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity—sending out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier—itself tapering upwards, and each circle of branches decreasing in diameter until a hundred and fifty feet are gained. The stems of some of these giants of the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, however, it happens that the tree has been contorted in its early growth, and then broken afterwards: in such cases it seems to have forgotten its nature completely, and to have gone mad in its spirit of increase; for it turns and forces itself into the strangest convolutions and intricacies of form. It becomes like a short stunted oak, or a thickly knotted thorn: or it might sometimes be mistaken for a willow, at others for a cedar—for any thing but one of the same species as the stately spire of wood that soars up into the heaven close by its side.
When the tree becomes quite dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage is mixed with the real covering of the boughs, forming the most anomalous, and yet the most picturesque of contrasts.
In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be found there—the hazel especially—and the thickets thereby formed are quite impenetrable. As the older and larger trees decay, they lose their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange position—presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. But wherever a tree falls, there a luxuriant growth of moss succeeds: a little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss and weed and dirty peat, till his descent is stopped by the skeleton of the vast tree that lies beneath. Wild flowers grow all around: and every spot of ground that will produce them is covered in the summer season with the tempting little red strawberry, or the wild raspberry, or the blushing rose. Above all, still keep peering, in solemn and interminable array, the vast monarchs of the wood, the stately and elegant silver-firs.
When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round, and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green, variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits—one of nature's secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in its course, and soon losing itself in the thick underwood that borders the spot all around. Such is the Salle de Mirabeau—one of the loveliest of the many lovely hiding-places of these sublime forests.
The feathered tenants of these woods are mostly birds of prey, or at all events such as the raven, the jay, the pie, and others which can either defend themselves against, or escape from, the falcons that consider these solitudes as their own especial domains. The voices of few singing-birds are to be heard; they have taken refuge nearer the habitations of man: but the hooting of the owl, the beating of the woodpecker, and the screaming of kites and hawks, are all the living sounds that proceed here from the air. Red-deer, wolves, wild-boars, roebucks, and foxes, are the denizens of these forests and these mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen. He who can content himself with his gun or his rod—for the streams are full of trout—may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.
Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont Dor.