CHAP. XXII.] AGE OF PINE TREES. 37 



so high a price ? It is because all spare cash is sunk here in 

 purchasing negroes. In order to get a week s work done for you, 

 you must buy a negro out and out for life.&quot; 



From Columbus we traveled fifty-five miles west to Chehaw, 

 to join a railway, which was to carry us on to Montgomery. 

 The stage was drawn by six horses, but as it was daylight we 

 were not much shaken. We passed through an undulating 

 country, sometimes on the tertiary sands covered with pines, 

 sometimes in swamps enlivened by the green palmetto and tall 

 magnolia, and occasionally crossing into the borders of the grani 

 tic region, where there appeared immediately a mixture of oak, 

 hickory, and pine. There was no grass growing under the pine 

 trees, and the surface of the ground was every where strewed 

 with yellow leaves, and the fallen needles of the fir trees. The 

 sound of the wind in the boughs of the long-leaved pines always 

 reminded me of the waves breaking on a distant sea-shore, and it 

 was agreeable to hear it swelling gradually, and then dying away, 

 as the breeze rose and fell. Observing at Chehaw a great many 

 stumps of these firs in a new clearing, I was curious to know 

 how many years it would take to restore such a forest if once de 

 stroyed. The first stump I examined measured two feet five 

 inches in diameter at the height of three feet from the ground, 

 and I counted in it 1 2 rings of annual growth ; a second meas 

 ured less by two inches in diameter, yet was 260 years old ; a 

 third, at the height of tAVO feet above the ground, although 180 

 years old, was only two feet in diameter ; a fourth, the oldest I 

 could find, measured, at the height of three feet above its base, 

 four feet, and presented 320 rings of annual growth ; and I could 

 liave counted a few more had the tree been cut down even with 

 the soil. The height of these trees varied from 70 to 120 feet. 

 From the time taken to acquire the above dimensions, we may 

 confidently infer that no such trees will be seen by posterity, after 

 the clearing of the country, except where they may happen to be 

 protected for ornamental purposes. I once asked a surveyor in 

 Scotland why, in planting woods with a view to profit, the oak 

 was generally neglected, although I had found many trunks of 

 very large size buried in peat-mosses. He asked if I had ever 



