trees for their turpentine, which has caused them for a century past to
be gradually thinned by consequent decay. Their tall, gaunt forms and
almost branchless trunks show that they obtained their principal growth
in a dense wood.

The first time I entered one of these Pine-Barrens was some years since,
in the month of June, when vegetation was in its prime, before the
summer droughts had seared the green herbage, and when the flowering
trees and shrubs were in all their glory. During my botanical rambles in
the wood, I was struck with the multitude of beautiful flowers in its
shady retreats,--seeming the more numerous to me, as I had previously
confined my researches to Northern woods. The Phlox grew here in all its
native grace and delicacy, where it had never known the fostering hand
of Art. Crimson Rhexias, called by the inhabitants Deer-Weed, were
distributed among the grassy knolls, like clusters of Picotees.
Variegated Passion-Flowers were conspicuous on the bare white sand that
checkered the ground, displaying their emblematic forms on their low
repent vines, and reminding the wanderer in these almost trackless
solitudes of that Faith which was founded on humility and crowned with
martyrdom. Here, too, the Spiderwort of our gardens, in a meeker form of
beauty and with a paler radiance, luxuriated under the protection of the
wood. Already I observed the predominance of luxuriant vines, indicating
our nearness to the tropic, wreathed gayly over the tall and branchless
trunks of the trees: some, like the Bignonia, in a full blaze of
crimson; others, like the Climbing Fern, draping the trees in continual
verdure.

These Pines constitute a great part of the timber of the flat country
between the mountains and the coast, and render a journey through
that region singularly monotonous and gloomy. In the low grounds, a