188 
RURAL HOURS. 
brethren have all been swept away, and these are left in isolated 
company, differing in character from all about them, a monument 
of the past. 
It is upon a narrow belt of land, a highway and a corn-field 
on one side, a brook and an orchard on the other, that these trees 
are rooted ; a strip of woodland connected with the forest on the 
hills above, and suddenly cut off where it approaches the fiist 
buildings of the village. There they stand, sUent spectators of 
the wonderful changes that have come over the valley. Hun- 
dreds of winters have passed since the cones which contained the 
seed of that grove fell from the parent tree ; centuries have 
elapsed since their heads emerged from the topmost wave of the 
sea of verdure to meet the sunshine, and yet it is but yesterday 
that their shadows first fell, in full length, upon the sod at their 
feet. 
Sixty years since, those trees belonged to a wilderness; the 
bear, the wolf, and the panther bmshcd their ti-unks, the ungain- 
ly moose and the agile deer browsed at their feet ; the savage 
hunter crept stealthily about their roots, and painted braves pass- 
ed noiselessly on the war-path beneath then- shade. How many 
successive generations of the red man have trod the soil they over- 
shadowed, and then sat down in their narrow graves — how many 
herds of wild creatures have chased each other through that wood, 
and left their bones to bleach among the fern and moss, there is 
no human voice can tell. We only know that the summer mnds, 
when they filled the canvas of Columbus and Cabot, three hun- 
dred years ago, came sweeping over these forest pines, munnur- 
ing then as we hear them murmur to-day. 
There is no record to teach us even the name of the first white 
