IN THE HEMLOCKS 213 



mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths, 

 their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered 

 retreats. 



Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and 

 torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon 

 by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by 

 the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, 

 their energies never paralyzed. Not many years 

 ago a public highway passed through them, but it 

 was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across 

 it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers 

 took the hint and went around; and now, walking 

 along its deserted course, I see only the footprints 

 of coons, foxes, and squirrels. 



Nature loves such woods, and places her own 

 seal upon them. Here she shows what can be done 

 with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is 

 marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Stand- 

 ing 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 the 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 Barkpeelings for raspberries and 



