80 



THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



times even the sight of the sky and the buzzard. It 

 was not until half an hour's struggle that, climbing 

 a pine-crested swell in the low bottom, I sighted the [ 

 bird again. It had not moved. 



I was now in the real swamp, the old uncut forest. 

 It was a land of tree giants : huge tulip poplar and 

 swamp white oak, so old that they had become soli- 

 tary, their comrades having fallen one by one ; while 

 , some of them, unable to loose their grip upon the soil, 

 rhich had widened and tightened through centuries, 

 were still standing, though long since dead. It was 

 upon one of these that the buzzard sat humped. 



Directly in my path stood an ancient swamp white 

 oak, the greatest tree, I think, that I have ever seen. 

 It was not the highest, nor the largest round, per- 

 haps, but in years and looks the greatest. Hoary, 

 hollow, and broken-limbed, his huge bole seemed 

 encircled with the centuries. 



" For it had bene an aimcieiit tree, 

 Sacred with many a mysteree." 



Above him to twice his height loomed a tulip pop- 

 liar, clean-boled for thirty feet and in the top all 

 | green and gold with blossoms. It was a resplendent ^ 

 thing beside the oak, yet how unmistakably the | ij 

 gnarled old monarch wore the crown ! His girth more [ if 

 than balanced the poplar's greater height ; and, as \ 

 for blossoms, he had his tiny-flowered catkins; but j 

 nature knows the beauty of strength and inward < 

 majesty, and has pinned no boutonniere upon the oak. f \ 





