The fertile flats that extended on each of its banks for more
than a mile, had been early stripped of their burthen of forest, and they
now lay in placid meadows, or in fields from which the grain of the season
had lately disappeared, and over which the plow had already left the marks
of recent tillage. The whole of the plain, which ascended gently from the
rivulet towards the forest, was subdivided in inclosures, by numberless
fences, constructed in the rude but substantial manner of the country.
Rails, in which lightness and economy of wood had been but little
consulted, lying in zigzag lines, like the approaches which the besieger
makes in his cautious advance to the hostile fortress, were piled on each
other, until barriers seven or eight feet in height, were interposed to
the inroads of vicious cattle. In one spot, a large square vacancy had
been cut into the forest, and, though numberless stumps of trees darkened
its surface, as indeed they did many of the fields on the flats
themselves, bright, green grain was sprouting forth, luxuriantly, from the
rich and virgin soil.
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