White Pine, Hemlock, And
Spruce Share This Country With Maples, Black And White Birches, And
Beech.
Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches
straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold
together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a
neglected pasture on the first opportunity.
There is no overcoat warmer
than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like
cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the
rock-ledges.
The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor
of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro
along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms.
There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the
partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted
logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps.
Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have
been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches
them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead
gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the
colours of the savage - red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there
is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the
shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and
hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk.
We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for
it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them
to sleep.
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