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Updated: May 4, 2025
On the 1st of September, about noon, there was only a copse of fir-trees between Murat and Gjatz. The appearance of cossacks obliged him to deploy his first regiments, but in his impatience he soon sent for some horse, and having himself driven the Russians from the wood which they occupied, he crossed it and found himself at the gates of Gjatz.
The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced with eyes of flame the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath, the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky.
On the second stage the winter road crossed an arm of the Bothnian Gulf. The path was well marked out with fir-trees a pretty avenue, four or five miles in length, over the broad, white plain. On the way we saw an eruption of the ice, which had been violently thrown up by the confined air. Masses three feet thick and solid as granite were burst asunder and piled atop of each other.
We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one single act, with the great majority slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidæ feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases.
Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is appropriately called the "forest-bed." It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and converted into dry land before the timber trees could grow upon it.
Yonder, under the fir-trees was his grandfather's house, strangers dwelled there. Children came running up the path, wishing to sell; one of them held an alpine rose towards him. Rudy took it for a good omen and thought of Babette. Quickly he crossed the bridge, where the two Lütschines meet; the leafy trees had increased and the walnut trees gave deeper shade.
By the smoky flames of torches, which threw a red glare upon the dark fir-trees, and the white tombstones, many grave-diggers worked merrily, humming snatches of some favorite tune. Their laborious and hazardous industry then commanded a very high price; they were in such request that it was necessary to humor them.
The way was rough enough at first, over heaped blocks of ice, but became smoother where the wind had full sweep, and had cleared the water before it froze. Our road was marked out by a double row of young fir-trees, planted in the ice. The bay was completely land-locked, embraced by a bold sweep of wooded hills, with rich, populous valleys between.
"Do you know what that is?" said Mr Burkett, giving it a blow with the butt end of his gun, which broke the moss to pieces as if it had been a huge toadstool. The mossy coat was an inch and a half in thickness, and the whole interior appeared filled with wide-spreading miniature fir-trees.
On many parts of the coast of England, what are commonly known as "submarine forests" are to be seen at low water. They consist, for the most part, of short stools of oak, beech, and fir-trees, still fixed by their long roots in the bed of blue clay in which they originally grew.
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