Dr. Rush, speaking of this tree, remarks: “These trees are generally found mixed with the beech, hemlock, ash, linden, aspen, butternut, and wild cherry-trees. They sometimes appear in groves, covering five or six acres in a body; but they are more commonly interspersed with some or all of the forest trees above mentioned. From thirty to fifty trees are generally found upon an acre of land.” Major Strickland says of it: “The Sugar Maple is probably the most common tree among the hard-wood species of Canada West. It is found generally in groves of from five to twenty acres; these are called by the settlers sugar-bushes, and few farms are without them.”
Though I consider the red maple a more beautiful tree, having more variety in its ramification, and a greater range of hues in its autumnal dress, than the Rock Maple, it must be confessed that the latter surpasses it in some important qualities. The Rock Maple has a deeper green foliage in summer, and is generally more brilliant in its autumnal tints, which, on account of the tenacity of its foliage, last from a week to ten days after the red maple has dropped all its leaves.
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.