In another moment they had crept a second time into the forest, though in the opposite quarter from that whence they had come; making their way through what had once been a broad path, evidently cut by the hands of man, through a thick cane-brake, though long disused, and now almost choked by brambles and shrubs; and, by and by, having followed it for somewhat less than half a mile, they found themselves on a kind of clearing, which, it was equally manifest, had been once a cultivated field of several acres in extent.

Throughout the whole of this space, the trunks of the old forest-trees, dimly seen in the light of a clouded sky, were yet standing, but entirely leafless and dead, and presenting such an aspect of desolation as is painful to the mind, even when sunshine, and the flourishing maize at their roots, invest them with a milder and more cheerful character.

Such prospects are common enough in all new American clearings, where the husbandman is content to deprive the trees of life, by _girdling_, and then leave them to the assaults of the elements and the natural course of decay; and where a thousand trunks, of the gigantic growth of the West, are thus seen rising together in the air, naked and hoary with age, they impress the imagination with such gloom as is engendered by the sight of ruined colonnades.
Such was the case with the present prospect; years had passed since the axe had sapped the strength of the mighty oaks and beeches; bough after bough, and limb after limb, had fallen to the earth, with here and there some huge trunk itself, overthrown by the blast, and now rotting among weeds on the soil which it cumbered.

At the present hour, the spectacle was peculiarly mournful and dreary.

The deep solitude of the spot,--the hour itself,--the gloomy aspect of the sky veiled in clouds,--the occasional rush of the wind sweeping like a tempest through the woods, to be succeeded by a dead and dismal calm,--the roll of distant thunder reverberating among-the hills,--but, more than all, the remembrance of the tragical event that had consigned the ill-fated settlement to neglect and desolation, gave the deepest character of gloom to the scene.
As the travellers entered upon the clearing, there occurred one of those casualties which so often increase the awe of the looker-on, in such places.