Addresses — A Winter Month in Northern Georgia. 187 



my room dispenses cheerfulness and partial comfort. But unex- 

 tinguishable surprise has been already holding me for many hours. 

 Is this the Sunny South? Am I really in one of the gulf states? 

 The senses do not realize it, and the mind almost refuses to believe 

 it. Nature's look is about the same here as in Wisconsin. Here, 

 too, she is dormant, under the influences of winter. The trees are 

 bare, and have a wonderfully familiar appearance. The oak ap- 

 pears to prevail, and with it are our old friends, the hickory, ash, 

 elm, poplar, wild cherry, maple, etc. The numerous chestnut trees, 

 and the varying soil and contour of surface, remind a New Yorker 

 of his native state. Indeed, this impression that I was in the Em- 

 pire State, not of the south, but of the east, seemed to be with me 

 constantly while within her borders. It was peculiarly strong when 

 one day I came upon a group of a dozen venerable beeches, whose 

 smooth gray bark, covered with initials and other hieroglyphics, 

 mutely testified to the far-carving power of the national jack-knife. 



While at first view the native trees and forests of North Georgia 

 appear in winter very like those of our own latitude, a close in- 

 spection reveals a greater luxuriance and freedom of growth than 

 is usually found in the north, especially in the northwest. The 

 "white and red oaks, for example, are far larger and nobler trees 

 there than the white and black oaks here, which they respectively 

 resemble in general outline. I was particularly struck with the 

 noble trunks and symmetrical heads of multitudes of red oaks, both 

 in grounds about dwellings and iri forests. Our own common, un- 

 certain, worm infested, nearly good for nothing black oaks appeared 

 to be there, under happier conditions, the noblest Romans of them 

 all. So also the hickory, far more common there than with us, attains 

 more majestic proportions — probably twice the average Wisconsin 

 size. While the nuts, equally overgrown, would be the delight and 

 astonishment of the northern school boy; he would frequently find 

 them beyond the range of his clubs or his climbing. 



But above all did I pay tribute of admiration and surprise to the 

 half score or so of beeches, a unique company of giants, into 

 whose presence I unexpectedly came one afternoon, as already in- 

 timated. I have seen good-sized beeches growing in moist and fer- 

 tile spots in the northern states — New York, Ohio and Indiana — 

 but none to be compared with those in either size or symmetry. 

 The trunks, smooth Tuscan columns of sixty or eighty feet, without 



