ee the stem rise, is
disposed to repine that another shall cut it down.

Plantation is naturally the employment of a mind unburdened with care,
and vacant to futurity, saturated with present good, and at leisure to
derive gratification from the prospect of posterity. He that pines with
hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is
seldom studious to make his grandson rich. It may be soon discovered,
why in a place, which hardly supplies the cravings of necessity, there
has been little attention to the delights of fancy, and why distant
convenience is unregarded, where the thoughts are turned with incessant
solicitude upon every possibility of immediate advantage.

Neither is it quite so easy to raise large woods, as may be conceived.
Trees intended to produce timber must be sown where they are to grow; and
ground sown with trees must be kept useless for a long time, inclosed at
an expence from which many will be discouraged by the remoteness of the
profit, and watched with that attention, which, in places where it is
most needed, will neither be given nor bought. That it cannot be plowed
is evident; and if cattle be suffered to graze upon it, they will devour
the plants as fast as they rise. Even in coarser countries, where herds
and flocks are not fed, not only the deer and the wild goats will browse
upon them, but the hare and rabbit will nibble them. It is therefore
reasonable to believe, what I do not remember any naturalist to have
remarked, that there was a time when the world was very thinly inhabited
by beasts, as well as men, and that the woods had leisure to rise high
before animals had bred numbers sufficient to intercept them.

Sir James Macdonald, in part of the wastes of his territory, set or sowed
trees, to the number, as I have been told, of several millions,
expecting, doubtless, that they would grow up into future navies and
cities; but for want of inclosure, and of that care which is always
necessary, and will hardly ever be taken, all his cost and labour have
been lost, and the ground is likely to continue an useless heath.

Having not any experience of a journey in Mull, we had no doubt of
reaching the sea by day-light, and therefore had not left Dr. Maclean's
very early. We travelled diligently enough, but found the country, for
road there was none, very difficult to pass. We were always struggling
with some obstruction or other, and our vexation was not balanced by a