Royal forest

“ High upon its plateau sits this historic wildwood, for the most part of a soil dry and sandy, with here and there some great mamelon (Druidical or Pagan, as the case may be) rising somewhat above the average level. Francis I, hunts [Pg 293] man and lover of art and nature, did much to preserve this great forest, and Louis XIV in his time developed its system of roads and paths, "chiefly to make hunting easy," says history, though it is difficult to follow this. ”

“ By the middle of the 17th century the devastation of forests had progressed so far, and the abuses in the management of the royal domain had become so evident that Louis XIV’s great minister, Colbert, was induced to make the historical remark “France will perish for lack of woods.” Again the needs of the navy was the prime incentive of the vigorous reform which he instituted after a most searching investigation. The result was the celebrated forest ordinance of 1669. ”

“ Surrounded by beautiful fern-trees nearly forty feet high, whose plumed caps tremble and vibrate in the breeze, one's eyes seek the lofty tops of these grand forest monarchs which are nearly lost in the sky to which they aspire; no church steeples, no cathedral pinnacle reared by the hand of man, but only mountain peaks reach so far heavenward. These forests are so abundant in their yield that local steam saw-mills are constantly engaged in cutting and preparing the lumber in various dimensions for the market. ”

“ Some names tell us of the great forests which used to exist all over the country, when kings and noblemen, outlaws and poachers, used to hunt the deer and the wild boars in many a successful run. These forests were large tracts of country in its natural state, partly wood, partly heather and grass, which were owned by the king, and were especially brought under the harsh forest laws of the Norman sovereigns. ”

“ The greater part of the morning passed thus with the bordermen steadily traversing the forest; here, through a spare and gloomy wood, blasted by fire, worn by age, with many a dethroned monarch of bygone times rotting to punk and duff under the ferns, with many a dark, seamed and ragged king still standing, but gray and bald of head and almost ready to take his place in the forest of the past; there, through a maze of young saplings where each ash, maple, hickory and oak added some new and beautiful hue to the riot of color. ”

“ There, in the long aisles, settles that depth of shade which no pencil can give, and that colouring which no canvas can retain, as the sunlight pierces through the green web of leaves, flinging, as it sets, a crown of gold round each tree-trunk.
Let no one, however, think they know anything of the Forest by simply keeping to the high road and the beaten tracks. ”

“ Government, by keeping here some few old trees, will do more to foster true Art than all the grants of Parliament. The old thorns of Bratley, the beeches of Mark Ash, and the yews of Sloden, will teach more than all the schools and galleries in the world. As we have laws to preserve our partridges and pheasants, surely we might have some to protect our trees and our landscapes.
Lastly, from its very nature, the New Forest is ever beautiful, at every season of the year, even in the depth of winter. The colouring of summer is not more rich. ”

“ Now they glided past between mighty forests intergrown with reeds,—now these became more open—plantations became visible,—and now, as they approached nearer and nearer to the gigantic commercial city of the south, the constantly increasing civilization and culture had driven the old, venerable, primeval forest far into the background, so that its distant tops could only be discerned as a green stripe on the horizon, and, instead thereof, a boundless sea of waving sugar-canes, and tall, stiff, cotton-plants surrounded them. ”

“ No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment. ”

“ It is only by seeing some such grey ruins as these, still breathing of a long past religion, placed amongst the solitude of their own green meadows and woods, by the silent lapse of some stream flowing and ebbing with every tide, that we can at all understand the meaning of a life of contemplation, and its true value. Along these cloisters paced the brethren, their eyes bent on the earth, their thoughts on heaven. Here tolled the great abbey-bell, its sound, full of solemn sweetness, borne not only over the lonely Forest, but down the river seaward to the tossing sailor. ”

“ Instead of the tall towers and walled cities, whose glittering windows now flash back the golden light, the sinking rays gilded a barrier of felled trees in the centre of the forest which surrounded the wattled and thatched huts of those ancient herdsmen, throwing its crimson rays upon the clear space behind, in which his herds and flocks were pastured for the night; while all around heaved up the grand and gloomy old forest, with its shadowy thickets, and dark dingles, and woody vallies untrodden by the foot of man. ”

“ No part of England contains a greater diversity of landscape than the New Forest. The undulating surface, covered in some parts by spreading woods, in others by heath, or patches of cultivation, with deep ravines, rocky heights, streams, and beyond all the blue sea. Yet perhaps the great charm lies in the natural wood, and the consciousness that we are gazing at Nature’s own handiwork ”

“ Besides these, examples of our northeastern forests, the pines of the southern Appalachians, the everglades of Florida, the tangled woodlands of the gulf, and other typical forests which perchance may have escaped the desolation of civilization, should be added to the splendid forest reserves of the national parks of the West, first-grown as Nature made them, forever to remain untouched by the axe. ”

“ Ever the good old world grows better, both with songs and with silence, in the pines.
One touch of forest nature makes the whole world kin. A tree is the flag of Nature, and forests give a universal feeling of good will. In the boundless forest the boundary-lines of nations are forgotten. Some time an immortal pine may be the flag of a united and peaceful world. In the forests' fairyland are still heard "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing." ”

“ The Forest Charter allowed a man to cut down and take wood from his own woods in the King's forest to repair his house, fences, and hedges. He may also enclose his woods in the King's forest with fences and hedges to grow new trees and keep cattle and beasts therefrom. ”

“ The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed. ”

“ Beyond the Alleghanies, and south of the great lakes, are vast natural parks, many of them enclosed, and dotted with herds of cattle ranging over them, which will show single trees, and clumps of forest that William the Conqueror would have given a whole fiefdom in his Hampshire spoliations to possess; while, stretching away toward the Gulf of Mexico, new varieties of tree are found, equally imposing, grand, and beautiful, throughout the whole vast range, and in almost every 184 locality, susceptible of the finest possible appropriation to ornament and use. ”

“ The exacting demands of our modern artificial civilization have drawn ceaselessly upon [Pg 89] these resources, and the assiduous ax and the fire that follows in its train have invaded even the most secluded regions. The resulting barren spaces, where they have not become cultivated land, have either reverted to the young white pine itself or have been transformed into oak barrens and open forests of broadleaf trees. Thus the aspect of the region has been altered, though many a limited spot may be found in which the tall majesty of the primeval forest still finds its full expression. ”

“ They must go into it, across the fern and the heather, and, if necessary, over the swamps, into such old woods as Barrow's Moor, Mark Ash, Bushey Bratley, and Oakley, wandering at their own will among the trees. The best advice which I can give to see the Forest is to follow the course of one of its streams, to make it your friend and companion, and go whereever it goes. It will be sure to take you through the greenest valleys, and past the thickest woods, and under the largest trees. No step along with it is ever lost, for if never goes out of its way but in search of some fresh beauty. ”

“ From every hill-top gleam the blue waters of the English Channel, broken in the foreground by the long line of the Isle of Wight downs and the white chalk walls of the Needles. Nowhere, in extent at least, spread such stretches of heath and moor, golden in the spring with the blaze of furze, and in the autumn purple with 5 heather, and bronzed with the fading fern. Nowhere in England rise such oak-woods, their boughs rimed with the frostwork of lichens, and dark beech-groves with their floor of red brown leaves, on which the branches weave their own warp and woof of light and shade. ”

“ At intervals its masses elect to move onwards and to engulf forests over which, for centuries, they have impended. Immediately below where we sit, the ridge terminates, abrupt as a precipice. Two hundred yards beyond, the sloping sand-foot is studded with half-buried pines—several forest monarchs already entombed to their centres, alive, but struggling in their death-throes. ”

“ There is rivalry of the strong and protection for the weak.
The grove is, in truth, a complete expression in little of Nature's forest plan. The characteristics of the greater redwood forests which require weeks or months to compass and careful correlation to bring into perspective, here are exhibited within the rambling of a day. The Muir Woods is an entity. Its meadow borders, its dark ravines, its valley floor, its slopes and hilltops, all show fullest luxuriance and perfect proportion. ”

“ The Forest, has a character of its own, with subsidiary traits and divagations that defy monotony. Ancient woods give place to modern plantations; beech succeeds to oak, and gloomy firs to either. Clearings and plantations, heaths and hamlets, and murmuring alleys of foliage, alternate for mile after mile, and moss-carpeted drives everywhere radiate from the orthodox highways.
This journey was not an exploration of the New Forest; these woodlands were but incidents in our itinerary; thus it was that we did not penetrate to Stony Cross and Rufus Stone, but kept straight ahead for Lyndhurst. ”

“ Here and there, too, as at Fritham, small farmsteads show their scanty crops of corn, or, as at Alum Green and Queen’s North, green lawns pierce and separate the woods, pastured by herds of cattle, with forest pools white with buckbean, and the little milkwort waving its blue heath on the banks.
These are the main characteristics of the New Forest, and, in some points at least, were the same in the days of the Red King. Nature, when left to herself, even in the course of centuries, changes little. The wild boars, and the wolves, and the red deer, are gone. ”

“ Then the children took courage and ran to the woodcutters and cried, “Pray do not cut down our tree! In all the forest we love it best. It is the Lady Silver Mist and it has been our playmate for many moons.”
“You must dig it up and bear it away if you wish to save its life,” said the chief woodman. “We are sent to this forest to clear it, so that a grand palace may be built upon the hillside where all is so fair and beautiful.” ”

“ None have ever, from the nature of the soil, been found to answer; and the 48 present condition is certainly, for many reasons, the best. The time will some day arrive when, as England becomes more and more overcrowded,—as each heath and common are swallowed up,—the New Forest will be as much a necessity to the country as the parks are now to London. ”

“ I have endeavoured, whenever there was an opportunity, to point out the natural history of the Forest, feeling sure that, from a lack of this knowledge, so many miss the real charms of the country. "One green field is like another green field," cried Johnson. ”

“ They consist of a rich, marly loam, and, when in a state of nature were clothed to their summits with the wild cane, dense and unusually large, a forest of magnolia, black walnut, immense oaks, and tulip or poplar-trees, with gigantic vines of the wild grape climbing and overtopping the tallest of these forest monarchs. Here among these picturesque hills and glorious woods, the emigrants fixed their homes, and here grew their posterity surrounding themselves with wealth, comforts, and all the luxuries and elegances of an elevated civilization. ”

“ This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. ”

“ May 28th.—The most extraordinary blight is now upon the trees that I believe ever was known: it is confined entirely to the oak, and chiefly to the large trees, although in some parts it is extending to the young plantations. The whole of the High Meadow woods and great part of the Forest, particularly Russell’s Enclosure, and where the timber is thick, are entirely stripped of their leaves, and look as if fire had passed through them. Where a beech stands amongst them, it is perfectly green, and the oaks all around quite brown. ”