, rotting upon heaps already
rotten,--stifling, burying the germs ready to burst forth. Nature, young
everywhere else, is here decrepit. The land surmounted by the ruins of
these productions offers, instead of flourishing verdure, only an
incumbered space pierced by aged trees, loaded with parasitic plants,
lichens, agarics--impure fruits of corruption. In the low parts is
water, dead and stagnant because undirected; or swampy soil neither
solid nor liquid, hence unapproachable and useless to the habitants both
of land and of water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants
nourishing only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between
these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend
plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds
smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems like
down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a
brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny
herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the soil, and
which, successively withering and impeding each other, form a coarse mat
several feet thick. There are no roads, no communications, no vestiges
of intelligence in these wild places. Man, obliged to follow the paths
of savage beasts and to watch constantly lest he become their prey,
terrified by their roars, thrilled by the very silence of these profound
solitudes, turns back and says:--

Primitive nature is hideous and dying; I, I alone, can make it living
and agreeable. Let us dry these swamps; converting into streams and
canals, animate these dead waters by setting them in motion. Let us use
the active and devouring element once hidden from us, and which we
ourselves have discovered; and set fire to this superfluous mat, to
these aged forests already half consumed, and finish with iron what fire
cannot destroy! Soon, instead of rush and water-lily from which the toad
compounds his venom, we shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and
salutary herbs. Herds of bounding animals will tread this once
impracticable soil and find abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They
will multiply, to multiply again. Let us employ the new aid to complete
our work; and let the ox, submissive to the yoke, exercise his strength
in furrowing the land. Then it will grow young again with cultivation,
and a new nature shall spring up under our hands.

How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by