Chapter 29

"Tarry a little;--there is something else."

Merchant of Venice.

We shift the scene. The reader will transport himself from the valley of
the Wish-Ton-Wish, to the bosom of a deep and dark wood.

It may be thought that such scenes have been too often described to need
any repetition. Still, as it is possible that these pages may fall into
the hands of some who have never quitted the older members of the Union,
we shall endeavor to give them a faint impression concerning the
appearance of the place to which it has become our duty to transfer the
action of the tale.

Although it is certain that inanimate, like animate nature, has its
period, the existence of the tree has no fixed and common limit. The oak,
the elm, and the linden, the quick-growing sycamore and the tall pine, has
each its own laws for the government of its growth, its magnitude, and its
duration. By this provision of nature, the wilderness, in the midst of so
many successive changes, is always maintained at the point nearest to
perfection, since the accessions are so few and gradual as to preserve its
character.

The American forest exhibits in the highest degree the grandeur of repose.
As nature never does violence to its own laws, the soil throws out the
plant which it is best qualified to support, and the eye is not often
disappointed by a sickly vegetation. There ever seems a generous emulation
in the trees, which is not to be found among others or different
families, when left to pursue their quiet existence in the solitude of the
fields. Each struggles towards the light, and an equality in bulk and a
similarity in form are thus produced, which scarce belong to their
distinctive characters. The effect may be easily imagined. The vaulted
arches beneath are filled with thousands of high, unbroken columns, which
sustain one vast and trembling canopy of leaves. A pleasing gloom and an
imposing silence have their interminable reign below, while an outer and
another atmosphere seems to rest on the cloud of foliage.

While the light plays on the varying surface of the tree-tops, one sombre
and little-varied hue colors the earth. Dead and moss-covered logs; mounds
covered with decomposed vegetable substances, the graves of long-past
generations of trees; cavities left by the fall of some uprooted trunk;
dark fungi, that flourish around the decayed roots of those about to lose
their hold, with a few slender and delicate plants of a minor growth, and
which best succeed in the shade, form the accompaniments of the lower
scene. The whole is tempered, and in summer rendered grateful, by a
freshness which equals that of the subterranean vault, without possessing
any of its chilling dampness. In the midst of this gloomy