THE FORESTS. 1 f> 



ing noises of the fire mingle the groans of the perishing 

 beasts ; while vast columns of smoke roll before the wind, 

 like the billows of a storm-tossed sea, and the prevailing 

 gloom of the scene is fitfully illuminated by live tongues 

 of flame. These " prairie fires " are sometimes kindled in 

 revenge by the Indians ; and sometimes the settlers adopt 

 this summary but dangerous mode of clearing the encum- 

 bered ground. At all times the spectacle is one of dreadful 

 magnificence, reminding the traveller of some of the lurid 

 pictures in Dante's " Inferno." 



THE FORESTS. 



To the east of the Mississippi spreads a " magnificent 

 undulating country," about 300 miles in breadth, and ex- 

 tending 1000 miles from north to south between the 

 " Father of Waters " and the Alleghany Mountains. This 

 immense tract is still, to a great extent, profusely wooded. 

 When America was first colonized, it formed one uninter- 

 rupted forest, spreading from the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 and the Canadian Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from 

 the Atlantic Ocean across the Alleghanies to the valley of 

 the Mississippi on the north, and still farther to the west- 

 ward in the south. This ocean of vegetation occupied an 

 area of 1,000,000 square miles, and the agriculturist as yet 

 has done but little to limit it. 



The cultivator has done much to open up the forests of 

 Tennessee and Kentucky; but the noble Ohio still rolls 

 its waters for hundreds of miles in the green gloom of 

 stately trees, while its banks bloom with a rich growth of 

 azaleas, rhododendrons, and other shrubs, intertangled by 



