cf the United States of North America* 27 



the ground, and into them wooden tubes, formed of the branch 

 of some soft-hearted tree hollowed out, are inserted. The 

 sap oozing from the maple flows through the tubes, and is col- 

 lected in troughs. It is then boiled until a syinip is formed of 

 sufficient strength to become solid on cooling, when it is run 

 into moulds and is ready for use. 



Such is a brief notice of some of the principal timbers of 

 the United States, which, from their great abundance and 

 variety, are suitable for almost every purpose connected with 

 the arts, and thus serve in some degree to compensate for the want 

 of stone, while at the same time they afford great advantages 

 for the prosecution of every branch of carpentry, an art which 

 has been brought to great perfection in that country. Many 

 ingenious constructions have been devised to render timber 

 applicable to all the purposes of civil architecture, and in no 

 branch of engineering is this more strikingly exemplified 

 than in bridge-building. Excepting a few small rubble arches 

 of inconsiderable span, there is not a stone-bridge in the 

 whole of the United States or Canada. But many wooden 

 bridges have been constructed. Several'of them, as is well 

 known, are upwards of a mile and a quarter in length, and 

 the celebrated Schuylkill Bridge at Philadelphia, which was 

 burnt about two years ago, but was in existence Avlien I visited 

 the country, consisted of a single timber-arch of no less than 

 320 feet span. Canal locks and aqueducts, weirs, quays, 

 breakwaters, and all manner of engineering works have there 

 been erected, in which wood is the material chiefly employed ; 

 so that if we characterize Scotland as a stone and England as 

 a brick country, we may, notwithstanding its granite and mar- 

 ble, safely characterize the United States as a country of 

 timber. 



I shall only, in conclusion, very briefly allude to the appear- 

 ance of the American forests, of which so much has been 

 written and said, and on this subject I may remark, that it is 

 quite possible to travel a great distance without meeting with 

 a single tree of very large dimensions ; but the traveller, I 

 think, cannot fail very soon to discover that the average 

 size of the trees is far above what is to be met with in this 

 country. I measured many trees, varying from 15 to 20 



