158 DENSE COVERTS IN AMERICAN FORESTS. 



description has been given of it by the pens of many 

 writers, of different nations and languages, than of any 

 similar region elsewhere. 



One hundred and thirty, or one hundred and forty 

 years ago, when the great struggle which was then 

 going on between Great Britain and France for 

 dominion over North America first attracted the general 

 attention of the civilized world to those regions, nearly 

 the whole seaboard of that great continent appeared 

 to be one vast forest region, both on its Atlantic and 

 also to a great extent upon its Pacific coasts ; and how 

 far the forest extended inland, or whether or not it 

 stretched in one unbroken expanse from sea to sea, 

 was practically unknown. There had been vague 

 rumours from Spanish and French sources of a great plains 

 country to the westward of the Mississippi, but nothing 

 definite was known about it, for the records of the early 

 discoveries by the Jesuit missionaries were generally kept 

 a close secret among the archives of the government offi- 

 ces at Paris and Madrid ; indeed it is only within quite 

 recent years that access has been obtained to them at all. 



Mr. Parkman tells us that at the time of the British 

 conquest of Canada, in 1760, throughout all that 

 country and the United States, except where the 

 woods had been actually cleared away by the settlers 

 * one vast continuous forest overshadowed the fertile 

 soil, covering the land as grass covers a garden lawn, 

 burying mountains and valleys in verdure. " * 



At the opening of the revolutionary war in 1775, 

 Mr. Roosevelt, in describing the forests in the revolted 

 provinces, says that: 



* The Conspiracy of Pontiac, by Francis Parkman, 1885, Vol. i., 

 p. 147- 



