DRIVING TREES. 29 



bows its tall head in submission, and without another 

 effort, and with a shock that shakes the hills around, 

 falls to the ground. There he lies with all his great 

 arms crushed under him, stretched a lifeless corse 

 along the earth. His brethren nod and tremble a mo- 

 ment above him, as if they felt the overthrow, then 

 all is still again. Thus the other day I brought a 

 brave old hemlock to the ground, and when I saw the 

 lofty green mass first begin to sway, and then heard 

 the snapping and rending of the tough fibres of the 

 trunk, a feeling of terror stole over me. This a back- 

 woodsman would doubtless call transcendentalism, ii 

 he knew the meaning of the term, but there is no 

 transcendentalism in swinging a heavy axe for an hour 

 to fetch one of these sturdy trees down. 



But felling a single tree is a small matter compared 

 to a process called here " driving trees" ? Don't im- 

 agine a whole " Birnam" forest on the move "for 

 Dunsinane," like a flock of sheep going to market ; but 

 sit down with me here on the side-hill, and look at that 

 opposite mountain slope. Just above that black fal- 

 low, or as they call it here " f oiler," there, in that 

 deep grove, five as good choppers as ever swung an 

 axe, have made the woods ring for the last three 



