. What were the "forests" of England to
these? One writer relates of the Isle of Wight, that in Charles the
Second's time "there were woods in the island so complete and
extensive, that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several
parts many leagues together on the top of the trees." If it were not
for the rivers, (and he might go round their heads,) a squirrel could
here travel thus the whole breadth of the country.

We have as yet had no adequate account of a primitive pine-forest. I
have noticed that in a physical atlas lately published in
Massachusetts, and used in our schools, the "wood land" of North
America is limited almost solely to the valleys of the Ohio and some
of the Great Lakes, and the great pine-forests of the globe are not
represented. In our vicinity, for instance, New Brunswick and Maine
are exhibited as bare as Greenland. It may be that the children of
Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake, who surely are not likely
to be scared by an owl, are referred to the valley of the Ohio to get
an idea of a forest; but they would not know what to do with their
moose, bear, caribou, beaver, etc., there. Shall we leave it to an
Englishman to inform us, that "in North America, both in the United
States and Canada, are the most extensive pine-forests in the world"?
The greater part of New Brunswick, the northern half of Maine, and
adjacent parts of Canada, not to mention the northeastern part of New
York and other tracts further off, are still covered with an almost
unbroken pine-forest.

But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part
of her territory is already as bare and common-place as much of our
neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as
ours. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of
sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man. Consider Nahant, the
resort of all the fashion of Boston,--which peninsula I saw but
indistinctly in the twilight, when I steamed by it, and thought that
it was unchanged since the discovery. John Smith described it in 1614
as "the Mattahunts, two pleasant isles of groves, gardens, and
cornfields"; and others tell us that it was once well wooded, and even
furnished timber to build the wharves of Boston. Now it is difficult
to make a tree grow there, and the visitor comes away with a vision of
Mr. Tudor's ugly fences a rod high, designed to protect a few
pear-shrubs. And what are we coming to in our Mi