THE FORESTS OF ACADIE. 31 



passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable 

 road ; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, 

 till finally travellers took the hint and went around ; and 

 now, walking along its deserted course, 1 see only the 

 footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels. 



** Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal 

 upon them. Here she shows me what can be done with 

 ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is marrowy and 

 full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant 

 aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and 

 am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life 

 going on so silently about me. 



" No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these 

 solitudes. The cows have half-hidden ways through 

 them, and know where the best browsing is to be had. 

 In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples 

 to make sugar ; in July and August women and boys 

 from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeeling 

 for raspberries and blackberries ; and I know a youth 

 who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for 

 trout. 



" In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June 

 morning go I also to reap my harvest, — ^pursuing a sweet 

 more delectable than sugar, fruit more savoury than ber- 

 ries, and game for another palate than that tickled by 

 trout." * 



Hemlock bark, possessing highly astringent properties, 

 is much used in America for tanning purposes, almost 



* There is no mistaking the authorship of this passage from the note- 

 books of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is not embodied in the recently- 

 published English edition of his notes ; I found it in a contribution of his 

 to an American periodical many years since, and preserved it as a gem. 



