Though It Was The Noon Of An Unclouded Sun, All Was Dark,
And Still, And Lonely; No Birds Twittered From
The branches; no animals
enlivened the gloomy shades; no trace of man or of his works was there,
except the
Two iron rails on which we flew along, unfenced from the
forest, and those trembling electric wires, which will only cease to speak
with the extinction of man himself.
Very occasionally we would come upon a log shanty, that most picturesque
of human habitations; the walls formed of large logs, with the interstices
filled up with clay, and the roof of rudely sawn boards, projecting one or
two feet, and kept in their places by logs placed upon them. Windows and
doors there were none, but, where a door was not, I generally saw four
or five shoeless, ragged urchins, whose light tangled hair and general
aspect were sufficient to denote their nationality. Sometimes these cabins
would be surrounded by a little patch of cleared land, prolific in Indian
corn and pumpkins; the brilliant orange of the latter contrasting with the
charred stumps among which they grew; but more frequently the lumberer
supported himself solely by his axe. These dwellings are suggestive, for
they are erected by the pioneers of civilization; and if the future
progress of America be equal in rapidity to its past, in another fifty
years the forests will have been converted into lumber and firewood - rich
and populous cities will have replaced the cabins and shanties - and the
children of the urchins who gazed vacantly upon the cars will have
asserted their claims to a voice in the councils of the nation.
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