Trees

In leaving Chillicothe, we pass through about seven miles of rich alluvial land, and then rise to fertile uplands.

Before we entered on this flat country were some hills covered with the grandest white oak timber, I suppose, in America. ... There are thousands, I think, of these magnificent trees within view of the road for miles, measuring fourteen or fifteen feet in circumference: their straight stems rising without a branch, to the height of seventy or eighty feet, not tapering and slender, but surmounted by full luxuriant heads.

For the space of a mile in breadth, a hurricane [or tornado], which traversed the entire western country in a north-east direction, about seven years ago, had opened itself a passage through this region of giants, and has left a scene of extraordinary desolation.

... There is a panther, the only one remaining, it is said, in this country, which makes this spot its haunt and eludes the hunters.

This passage was written about the lands along what is now State Route 28 between U.S. Route 50 and Carpenters Hill in Ross County, Ohio, USA--land now occupied by housing developments, fencerows and a few pasture fields.

Trees are very interesting objects to the American traveller: They are always beautiful; and in the rich bottoms they sometimes exhibit a grand assemblage of gigantic beings which carry the imagination back to other times, before the foot of the white man had touched the American shore. Yesterday I measured a walnut tree almost seven feet in diameter, clean and straight as an arrow; and just by, were rotting, side by side, two sycamores of nearly equal dimensions!

I measured a white oak, by the road side, which, at four feet from the ground, was six feet in diameter; and at seventy-five feet, it measured...three feet in diameter.

This was written about the floodlands along the Scioto River south of Chillicothe, Ohio, USA.

The contrast between what was and what is now is stunning.

Of course, the process of settlement, deforestation, agricultural stablishment, agricultural mechanization, road paving, and final urban incursion covered a span of generations--each one forgetting what the previous one lamented in loosing.