48 Trails to Woods and Waters 



" After this my. life went on peacefully 

 and uneventfully for fifty years more. Men 

 came and went in the valley below, crawling 

 slowly like worms and from my great height 

 they seemed like ants. They built their little 

 block houses, and in them lived their lives of 

 joy and sorrow, while I stood guard on the 

 brow of the hill. Occasionally men came into 

 the woods and hacked and scarred the ancient 

 forest, but I went unscathed. 



" The red man no longer camped under 

 my friendly boughs and the deer and the bear, 

 and the tall moose had disappeared from the 

 forest. But I still had the birds and squirrels 

 and all the small creatures whose pitter-patter 

 in the leaves I knew so well. 



" The jay and the crow nested in my 

 branches and the red squirrel could make a 

 fair meal upon my cones when he was hungry. 

 But the fish-hawks, who had builded in my 

 branches before the great storm, were gone. 

 Their nests have been blown to bits, and one 

 of the great birds killed in the cyclone. 



" Many a little forest warbler also found 



