THE DAKK PLAINS. 295 



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 im- 

 pressive, 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 noon- 

 day ; 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 ex- 

 tent, 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 inter- 

 lacing 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 



