of a little stream whose water was clear and pure and cold, 

 far away from any human habitation. 



"Why," I said to my guide, "is no one living here? Will 

 not these lands produce when cleared of timber?" 



"The land is dead," he replied. 



"And these blackened trees, are they worthless now?" 



"The trees are dead," he answered. 



"And these streams do not they contain fish?" 



"The fish are dead," he responded. 



"And the wild animals that were here?" 



"They are dead, those that didn't escape." 



"And will this land never produce again?" 



"Some day," he replied, "some day, years from now, it 

 may grow trees, but that is a long time away. The top soil 

 is dead. It grows nothing. The land is deserted. The wild 

 animals do not come here because there is nothing on which 

 they may feed. The birds do not come except as they stop 

 in their flights from sections where the country is green. The 

 hunter does not come because it affords him no game. The 

 settler does not come because he can raise no crops. The 

 pleasure-seeker does not come because of the loneliness. No 

 one comes. This land is shunned and despised and hated." 



A Silence That Weights and Depresses the Dweller in the 



Woods. 



We prepared supper from a campfire made in the roadway, 

 and watched the day die out of the sky. A big moon came 

 up in the southeast and began casting shadows from the tall 

 blackened trunks. A little wind sprang up but its move- 

 ment was scarcely heard among the great poles that once had 

 been trees. We felt it on our faces, saw it fleck off bits of 

 ashes from the hulks about us but the woods were silent. 

 There was none of that soft sighing which marks the passage 

 of the night breezes through the pine trees of the woods, no 

 gentle sw r aying of branches, no dropping of cones, no laugh- 

 ing and fluttering of leaves such as mark the forests where 

 there is life and living, breathing, things. Instead, there 

 was that cold, still silence which marks the presence of the 

 dead and in which there is no moving creature. 



