A FOREST LANDSCAPE. 
29 
in the direction of St. Gothard and the amphitheatre 
of mountains. But all this grandeur and brightness 
terminated suddenly at the first step we took beneath 
our firs. It was as if one had reached the end of the 
world. The light lessened; sounds seemed subdued; 
life itself appeared absent. 
Such, at the first glance, is the customary effect 
of the woods. But at the second all is changed. The 
suffocation, or at least subordination, imposed by the 
fir upon all those plants which would fain grow in 
its shade, lets light into the depths; and when the 
eyes have become accustomed to this kind of gloaming, 
we see considerably further, and distinguish much 
more clearly, than in the inextricable labyrinth of ordi¬ 
nary forests where everything acts as an obstruction. 
The spectacle first presented to us under the noble 
funereal pillars—the pillars, may we not say ? of a 
stately temple—was a spectacle of death; not of a sad¬ 
dening death, but of a death rich, adorned, and grace¬ 
ful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants. At 
every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not up¬ 
rooted, were clothed in an incomparable velvety green, 
—a tissue superbly woven of fine mosses soft to the 
touch, which delighted the eye by their changing 
aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams. 
But where was the animal life of the forest ? Our 
ears soon grew accustomed to recognize and divine its 
presence. I do not refer to the whistle of the tomtits, 
or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the evident lord of the place. 
I am thinking of a different people, against whom the birds wage war. 
