We had driven no great distance, when my companion lifted his whip, and,
pointing to a long, dark, indistinct line which crossed the road in the
distance, blocking the prospect ahead and on either side, as far as the
eye could reach, exclaimed: "Them's the Pines!" As we approached the
forest, a change, theatrical in its suddenness, took place in the
scenery through which our course was taken. The rich and smiling
pasture-lands, interspersed with fields of luxuriant corn, were left
behind, the red clay of the road was exchanged for a gritty sand, and
the road itself dwindled to a mere pathway through a clearing. The
locality looked like a plagiarism from the Ohio backwoods. On both sides
of our path spread the graceful undergrowth, waving in an ocean of
green, and hiding the stumps with which the plain was covered, while far
away, to right and left, the prospect was bounded by forest walls, and
gloomy bulwarks and parapets of pines arose in front, as if designed, in
their perfect denseness, to exclude the world from some bosky Garden
of Paradise beyond. Not so, however; for our pathway squeezes itself
between two melancholy sentinel-pines, tracing its white scroll into the
forest farther than the eye can follow, and in a few moments we leave
the clearing behind, and pass into the shadow of the endless avenue,
and bow beneath the trailing branches of the silent, stern, immovable
warders at the gate.
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