Every Tree Had Been Scored By
The Axe Upon One Of Its Sides, Some Of Them As High As The Arm Could Reach
Down To The Roots, And The Broad Wound Was Covered With The Turpentine,
Which Seems To Saturate Every Fibre Of The Long-Leaved Pine.
Sometimes we
saw large flakes or crusts of the turpentine of a light-yellow color,
which had fallen, and lay beside the tree on the ground.
The collection of
turpentine is a work of destruction; it strips acre after acre of these
noble trees, and, if it goes on, the time is not far distant when the
long-leaved pine will become nearly extinct in this region, which is so
sterile as hardly to be fitted for producing any thing else. We saw large
tracts covered with the standing trunks of trees already killed by it; and
other tracts beside them had been freshly attacked by the spoiler. I am
told that the tree which grows up when the long-leaved pine is destroyed,
is the loblolly pine, or, as it is sometimes called, the short-leaved
pine, a tree of very inferior quality and in little esteem.
About half-past two in the afternoon, we came to Wilmington, a little town
built upon the white sands of Cape Fear, some of the houses standing where
not a blade of grass or other plant can grow. A few evergreen oaks, in
places, pleasantly overhang the water. Here we took the steamer for
Charleston.
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