To them the country was a unit--it was theirs.

They themselves were a unit, a conscious group; they thought in terms of the community.

As such, their time-sense was not limited to the hopes and ambitions of an individual life.

Therefore, they habitually considered and carried out plans for improvement which might cover centuries.
I had never seen, had scarcely imagined, human beings undertaking such a work as the deliberate replanting of an entire forest area with different kinds of trees.

Yet this seemed to them the simplest common sense, like a man's plowing up an inferior lawn and reseeding it.