The pine barrens of the Southern States are celebrated as healthful retreats for the inhabitants of the seaports, whither they resort in summer to escape the prevailing fevers. They are generally of a mixed character, consisting of the Northern pitch-pine, the long-leaved pine, and a few other species, intermixed with the Southern cypress, occasional red maples, and a few other deciduous trees. Pines, however, constitute the dominant growth; but the trees are, for the most part, widely separated, so that the surface is green with herbs and grasses, and often covered with flowers. The thinness of these woods may be attributed to the practice, for two centuries past, of tapping the trees for turpentine, causing their gradual decay. Their tall forms and branchless trunks show that they obtained their principal growth in a dense wood.
The first visit I made to the pine barrens was after a long ride by railroad through the plains of North Carolina. It was night; and I often looked from the car windows into the darkness, made still more affecting by the sight of the tall pines that raised their heads almost into the clouds, like monsters watching the progress of our journey. The prospect was rendered almost invisible by the darkness that gave prominence to the dusky forms of the trees as they were pictured against the half-luminous sky. At length the day began to break, and the morning beams revealed to my sight an immense wilderness of giant spectres. The cars made a pause at this hour, allowing the passengers to step outside; and while absorbed in the contemplation of this desolate region, suddenly the loud and mellow tones of the mocking-bird came to my ears, and, as if by enchantment, reversed the character of my thoughts. The desert, no longer a solitude, inspired me with emotions of unspeakable delight. Morning never seemed so lovely as when the rising sun, with his golden beams and lengthened shadows, was greeted by this warbling salutation, as from some messenger of light who seemed to announce that Nature over all scenes has extended her beneficence, and to all regions of the earth dispenses her favors and her smiles.
At the end of my journey I took a stroll into the wood. It was in the month of June, when vegetation was in its prime, before it was seared by the summer drought. Many beautiful shrubs were conspicuous with their flowers, though the wood contained but a small proportion of shrubby undergrowth. During my botanical rambles in this wood, I was struck with the multitude of flowers in its shady arbors, seeming the more numerous to me as I had previously confined my observations to Northern woods. The phlox grew here in all its native delicacy, where it had never known the fostering hand of man. Crimson rhexias—called by the inhabitants deerweed—were distributed among the grassy knolls, like clusters of picotees. Variegated passion-flowers were conspicuous on the bare white sand that checkered the green surface, displaying their emblematic forms on their low repent vines, and reminding the wanderer in these solitudes of that faith which was founded on humility and crowned with martyrdom. Here too the spiderwort of our gardens, in a meeker form of beauty and a paler radiance, luxuriated under the protection of the wood. I observed also the predominance of luxuriant vines, indicating our near approach to the tropics, rearing themselves upon the tall and naked shafts of the trees, some, like the bignonia, in a full blaze of crimson, others, like the climbing fern, draping the trees in perennial verdure.
THE FIR.
The Fir and the spruce are readily distinguished from the pine by their botanical characters and by those general marks which are apparent to common observers. They have shorter leaves than the pine, not arranged in fascicles, but singly and in rows along the branch. The cones of the American species are smaller than those of the pine, and they ripen their seeds every year; their lateral branches are smaller and more numerous, and are given out more horizontally. They are taller in proportion to their spread, and more regularly pyramidal in their outlines. The principal generic distinction between the Fir and the spruce is the manner in which they bear their cones; those of the Fir stand erect upon their branch, while those of the spruce are suspended from it. Botanists have lately separated the spruce from the Fir, which they describe under the generic name of Picea. As my descriptions of trees are physiognomical rather than botanical, I shall have no occasion to adopt or to reject this innovation. The spruces, however, are always described by travellers as firs. Whenever they speak of Fir woods, they include in them both the Fir and the spruce.
THE BALSAM FIR.
This tree is the American representative of the silver fir of Europe, but is inferior to it in all respects. The silver fir is one of the tallest trees on the continent of Europe, remarkable for the beauty of its form and foliage, and for the value of its timber. The American tree is inferior to it in height, in density of foliage, in longevity, and in the durability of its wood. Both trees, however, display the same general characters to observation, having a bluish-green foliage, with a silvery under surface, closely arranged upon the branches, that curve gracefully upward at the extremities. The secondary branches have the same upward curvature, never hanging down in the formal manner of the Norway spruce. There is an airiness in its appearance that is quite charming, and to a certain extent makes amends for its evident imperfections. When the Balsam Fir is young, it is very neat and pretty; but as it advances in years it becomes bald, and displays but little foliage except on the extremities of the branches. This is a remarkable defect in many of this family of trees. European writers complain of it in the silver fir. It is observed in the hemlock, except in favorable situations, and in the black spruce, but in a less degree in the white and Norway spruces.
THE SPRUCE.
The Spruce, which is indigenous in New England, comprehends the White and the Black Spruce and the Hemlock. The etymology of this word is worthy of notice. Evelyn says, “For masts (speaking of firs), those from Prussia, which we call Spruce, and Norway are the best.” The word seems to be a corruption of “Pruse,” meaning Prussian. I have formerly thought that the name was applied to this tree to distinguish it from others of the same family which display less of this formal symmetry; but the fir proper is certainly more spruce in its shape than the more flowing Spruce Fir.