MOUNTAIN-FOEESTS. 
67 
sort of undefined awe, as if I knew not what I might 
meet in those deep solitudes, where 
“ The roof 
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade.” 
But when once we are within the shade, and the 
pupil of the eye, relieved of the broad glare, has had 
time to dilate a little, there is found to be abundant 
light for every purpose, softened and subdued as it is 
by being transmitted through the thousand green 
leaves that quiver and flash over head. The ground 
is very rocky ; vast masses of rock lying irregularly 
heaped on one another, as if the fabled Titans had 
been attempting to scale heaven from thence. Com- 
paratively few of the trees are large, the great ma- 
jority showing trunks so slender as to suggest the 
idea of second growth ; that is, of wood springing 
up spontaneously after the ground had been once 
cleared. But the great prostrate trunks, lying in all 
directions, so soft with decomposition as scarcely to 
hear their own weight, — long columnar masses of 
pap-like substance, woody fibre deprived of tenacity 
and saturated with water, the outer surface for se- 
veral inches deep already turned to black mould, and 
bearing a dense crop of ferns and mosses, — proved 
convincingly that the hand of man had not disturbed 
the primal forest here; but that these giants had 
died a natural death where for ages they had reared 
their lofty heads. Many of these fallen trunks, and 
of the masses of rock, are covered with a dense and 
elegant sort of club-moss (^Lycopodium ) ; a graceful 
drapery concealing the decay of the former, and the 
