and their dependencies in the territory of the present United States,
and in Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as
of the Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of
equilibrium, though under very different conditions.] and whenever the
Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the beasts of the
chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the woods he had
burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of herbaceous,
arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state. Even a
single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their primitive
luxuriance of forest vegetation. [Footnote: The great fire of Miramichi
in 1825, probably the most extensive and terrific conflagration recorded
in authentic history, spread its ravages over nearly six thousand square
miles, chiefly of woodland, and was of such intensity that it seemed to
consume the very soil itself. But so great are the recuperative powers
of nature, that, in twenty-five years, the ground was thickly covered
again with tree of fair dimensions, except where cultivation and
pasturage kept down the forest growth.]

The unbroken forests had attained to their maximum density and strength
of growth, and, as the older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded
by new shoots or seedlings, so that from century to century no
perceptible change seems to have occurred in the wood, except the slow,
spontaneous succession of crops. This succession involved no
interruption of growth, and but little break in the "boundless
contiguity of shade;" for, in the husbandry of nature, there are no
fallows. Trees fall singly, not by square roods, and the tall pine is
hardly prostrate, before the light and heat, admitted to the ground by
the removal of the dense crown of foliage which had shut them out,
stimulate the germination of the seeds of broad-leaved trees that had
lain, waiting this kindly influence, perhaps for centuries.