There They Lay,
Thirty-Eight In Number, Up Against The Mud Banks Of The Ohio, Under
The Boughs Of The Half-Clad, Melancholy Forest Trees, As Sad A
Spectacle Of Reckless Prodigality As The Eye Ever Beheld.
But the
contractor who made them no doubt was a smart man.
This armada was moored on the Ohio, against the low, reedy bank, a
mile above the levee, where the old, unchanged forest of nature came
down to the very edge of the river, and mixed itself with the
shallow, overflowing waters. I am wrong in saying that it lay under
the boughs of the trees, for such trees do not spread themselves out
with broad branches. They stand thickly together, broken, stunted,
spongy with rot, straight, and ugly, with ragged tops and shattered
arms, seemingly decayed, but still ever renewing themselves with the
rapid, moist life of luxuriant forest vegetation. Nothing to my
eyes is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery. We
in England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of
America, are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades,
with spreading oaks, and green, mossy turf beneath - of scenes than
which nothing that God has given us is more charming. But these
forests are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the
lover, no solace to the melancholy man of thought. The ground is
deep with mud or overflown with water. The soil and the river have
no defined margins.
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