TRAVELS 
232 
earth with their humbled tops. Such as might be thought capable 
of making the Routed refidance are the mod roughly treated; and 
thofe hurricanes, like the thunder of heaven, which drikes only 
the loftied objeds, pading over the young, and fparing them, be- 
caufe they are more pliant and dexible, feem to mark the dronged 
and mod robud trees of the fored, which are in condition to meet 
them with a proud oppofition, as alone worthy of their rage. Let 
the reader fancy to himfelf three or four miles of fored, where he 
is continually in the prefence of this difadrous fpe&acle; let him 
reprefent to his imagination the view of a thick wood, wdiere he 
can fcarcely fee one upright tree; where all of them being thus 
forcibly inclined, are either propped by one another, or broken in 
the middle of the trunk, or torn from their roots and prodrated 
on the ground : every where trunks, branches, and the ruins of 
the fored, interrupting his view of the road, and exhibiting a 
dngular picture of confudon and ruin. 
There is a great road through the midd of this fored which 
may be tolerably fuited for travelling in dimmer; but the peafants 
do not always continue upon it during the winter feafon ; for 
then they find no difficulty in traverfing a lake or a river, and are 
not obliged to follow the windings which -the great line of road 
naturally makes, in order to avoid accidental interruptions : they 
condantly dudy to proceed as much as poffible in a draight line ; 
and that they may not lofe themfelves in thofe dark and melan¬ 
choly woods, the fird who lights upon the mod convenient way, 
marks all the trees with an axe (as is done in America), in order 
to 
