their farms, just to look at. Now,
I call no country much improved, that is pretty well covered with trees. Stumps
are a different thing, for they don't shade the land; and besides, if you dig
them, they make a fence that will turn any thing bigger than a hog, being grand
for breachy cattle.«
    »Opinions on such subjects vary much, in different countries,« said
Marmaduke; »but it is not as ornaments that I value the noble trees of this
country; it is for their usefulness. We are stripping the forests, as if a
single year would replace what we destroy. But the hour approaches, when the
laws will take notice of not only the woods, but the game they contain also.«
    With this consoling reflection, Marmaduke remounted, and the equestrians
passed the sugar- on their way to the promised landscape of Richard. The
wood-chopper was left alone, in the bosom of the forest, to pursue his labours.
Elizabeth turned her head, when they reached the point where they were to
descend the mountain, and thought that the slow fires, that were glimmering
under his enormous kettles, his little brush shelter, covered with pieces of
hemlock bark, his gigantic size, as he wielded his ladle with a steady and
knowing air, aided by the back-ground of stately trees, with their spouts and
troughs, formed, altogether, no unreal picture of human life in its first stages
of civilization. Perhaps whatever the scene possessed of a romantic character
was not injured by the powerful tones of Kirby's voice, ringing through the
woods, as he again awoke his strains to another tune, which was but little more
scientific than the former. All that she understood of the words, were -
 
»And when the proud forest is falling,
To my oxen cheerfully calling,
From morn until night I am bawling,
Woe, back there, and hoy and gee;
Till our labour is mutually ended,
By my strength and cattle befriended,
And against the musquitoes defended,
By the bark of the walnut tree. -
 
Away! then, you lads who would buy land,
Choose the oak that grows on the high land,
Or the silvery pine on the dry land,
It matters but little to me.«
 

                                  Chapter XXI

 »Speed! Malise, speed! such cause of haste
 Thine active sinews never brac'd.«
                                      Scott, The Lady of the Lake, III.xiii.3-4.
 
The roads of Otsego, if we except the principal highways, were, at the