Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1879-10-30

On three sides of the cane field the for
est rises in solid mass fully one hundred
feet. 4 distance of fifteen or twenty
miles, perhaps, has been reached by the
hunters and sarsaparilla gatherers; be-
yOnd that the country is as completely
terra inc0gRjta as the other side of the
moon. But so far as we know, with very
slight breaks, the whole of the AmaZO-
nian highland is covered with this thick
growth of trees. There is no other forest
region in the world of like extent and
richness of its productions. Where the
land has been recently cleared we get a
kind of section of the forest; hundreds
of gray and white columns set close to-
gether like the pickets in a fence, and
supporting a green roof above. But
within everything is a maze; Il chaotic
confusion of tree trunks and vines, and
branches and leaves. Even on the ocean
you are not so weighed with a sense of
your insigniticance as when wandering
in these pathleSs sOlitudeS. For at sea
there is always the same horizon, 4 def
mite boundary to vision; and in the very
attempt to reach beyond it the imagina-
ton forms an ideal ocean, a limited i'm
mensity. The ship carries you on with
out any bodily eXertiOn of your own:
you know that yOU are moving, as yOu
know that the earth moves, but day after
day there are the same sea and sky to give
y
you are forced to measure your own
power with the infinite. Guided by the
compass, you keep a straight line for days
together, but it is not like a woodland
walk at home; you must do battle for
your right of way, cutting Il narrow pas
sage through hedge-like thicIets and mats
of woody vines and intcrlaced branches.
And then, after 4 day of hard fighting,
you lay yourself down at the foot of some
giant tree and look up, to where the
bOughs are all mingled together and sin
gle leaves are undistinguiShable, where
the fragments of blue sky seem hardly
more distant than the tree tops, as if you
saw them through an inverted telescope; +;
and then off through the vague network
of leaves and tree trunks and rOpe-like
air roots and twisted vines, until the
vision is lost you know not where; only
you feel in your InmOst soul that there is
mysterious and unfathOmable depth be-
yOnd; you know that you are hardly
within the borders of the wilderness
where you could travel for months and
never reach the end; you compare your
own littleness with the littleness of a
single tree, which, standing alone, would
be a beacon for miles around, and you
bow your head with fear and trembling,
with the cry of the human, g Be pitiful,
0 God!' A first there is only the over
whelming impression of extent and i'm
penetrabIe tangle. After while the
| eyes grow accustomed to the labyrinth
! and we begin to notice the component
| parts then we see how different the high
| land forest is from the pictures we have
! drawn of it. We get our ideas of the
| tropics from the greenhouses, where a
| great number of brOad-leaved, handsome
! plants are gathered from every quarter
| of the world, and thrown together with
out any regard to their distribution ii
nature; all of them remarkable for their
! singular forms OF bright cOloTs or SNOWY
| flowers. But the high forest has nothing
to compare with this; in many respects
| it rather resembles our woods at home
only it is far thicker and higher. Palm!
are common in many places, but, as theil
tops are lost in the tangle above, We
hardly notice them; only the large stem
less curuas sometimes form peculiar
foreground. There are no bananas, nt
callas, no bambOos; even the orchids auC
brOmelias are hidden among the branche!
fifty feet over our heads. For the mos
part the trees look much like northern
species. Almost all forest trees arr
straight and comparatively slender; her
the trunks are more buried in foliage, ant
the upper branches are a hundred, per
haps a hundred and fifty feet, from tn
ground. Some form fiuted columns O
buttresses around the roots; a few ar
spiny. In the foliage we only notice tn
curious effect produced by the prepOn
derance of pinnate leaves, as in the aca
cias and myrtles. But in the nOrther
wood, over large tracts, we find onl
j | pines or beecheS or oaks OI. at most on 4
four or five kinds together. Here ther
will hardly be two kinds alike on an acre
in a days walk we may see three or fOu
hundred species. But there are exceT
tions to this; in many places the groun
is largely occupied by two or three spt
cies, but not to the entire exclusion {
the others.