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232 TRAVELS
earth with their humbled tops. Such as might be thought capable
of making the ftouteft refiftance are the moft roughly treated ; and
thofe hurricanes, like the thunder of heaven, which {trikes only
the loftieft objects, pafling over the young, and fparing them, be-
caufe they are more pliant and flexible, feem to mark the ftrongeft
and moft robuft trees of the foreft, which are in condition to meet
them with a proud oppofition, as alone worthy of their rage. Let
the reader fancy to himfelf three or four miles of foreft, where he
is continually in the prefence of this difaftrous fpe€tacle ; let him
reprefent to his imagination the view of a thick wood, where he
can fcarcely fee one upright tree; where all of them being thus
forcibly inclined, are either propped by one another, or broken in
the middle of the trunk, or torn from their roots and proftrated
on the ground : every where trunks, branches, and the ruins of
the foreft, interrupting his view of the road, and exhibiting a
fingular piCture of confufion and ruin.
There is a great road through the midft of this foreft which
may be tolerably fuited for travelling in fummer ; but the peafants
do not always continue upon it during the winter feafon; for
then they find no difficulty in traverfing a lake or a river, and are
not obliged to follow the windings which the great line of road
naturally makes, in order to avoid accidental interruptions : they
conftantly ftudy to proceed as much as poflible in a ftraight line ;
and that they may not lofe themfelves in thofe dark and melan-
choly woods, the firft who lights upon the moft convenient way,
marks all the trees with an axe (as is done in America), in order
to
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