n
glades."

"Nous le verrons, peut-etre."

THE FOREST.

All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic
chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests:
gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely
the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf,
the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared
from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in
primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the
destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest
is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by
man: full of all its sublime grandeur--solemn, vast, and mysterious as
forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests
will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the
deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up
the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the
higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses
of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a
luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied
this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur,
leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys;
running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping
the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through
these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human
being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected
turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green
glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme
simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and
on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the
gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold
exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of
France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the
hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in
perennial perfection.

It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here
attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity--sending
out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier--itself ta