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Oaks, elms, and walnuts, tulip-trees and beeches, with other monarchs of the wilderness, lifted their trunks like so many pillars, green with mosses and ivies, and swung their majestic arms, tufted with mistletoe, far over head, supporting a canopy, a series of domes and arches without end, that had for ages overshadowed the soil.
An hour or so after luncheon he strolled out into the gardens, having given up all idea of writing those letters, There was a wide lawn, that sloped from the terrace in front of the drawing-room windows, a lawn encircled by a belt of carefully-chosen timber. It was not very old timber, but it was sufficiently umbrageous. There were tulip-trees, and copper-beeches, and Douglas pines, and deodoras.
Strange types of half- civilized whites, game enough to satisfy the most rapacious, beast and bird of peculiar species, and over all the immense forests of cypress, sweet-gums, Spanish-oaks, tulip-trees, sycamores, cotton-woods, white- oaks, &c., while the most delicate wild-flowers "waste their sweetness on the desert air."
They were the trunks of tall straight trees, that, from time to time, had fallen, and were now quite dead and dry. They were the trunks of the beautiful rhododendrons, or tulip-trees, out of which the Indians always make their canoes, when they can get them of sufficient size. This, because their wood is extremely soft and light weighing only twenty-six pounds to the cubic foot.
These he made in the usual manner. He cut the trunks of several tulip-trees those that were about twelve inches in diameter into logs of three feet each. These logs he split into two equal parts, and hollowed out the split sides with his chisel and mallet thus forming rude vessels, but quite good enough for the purpose of holding the sap.
The shapeless cypress "knees" no longer impeded my progress. I now passed among tulip-trees, dogwoods, and magnolias. Less densely grew the trunks, lighter and less shadowy became the foliage above; until at length I pushed through the last selvage of the underwood, and stood in the open sunshine. A cry of agony rose upon my lips. It was wrung from me by despair.
A little English girl accompanied us, who had but lately left her home; she exclaimed, "Oh! how many English ladies would glory in such a garden as this!" and in truth they might; cedars, tulip-trees, planes, shumacs, junipers, and oaks of various kinds, most of them new to us, shaded our path.
Why, the English king gave him 50 pounds to enable him to travel over thousands of miles of wilderness in search of rare plants, many of which on reaching England were worth hundreds of pounds each! This was all the poor botanist had for enriching the gardens of Kew, and sending over the first magnolias and tulip-trees that ever blossomed in England! What did the scientific naturalists do for him?
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