Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/20

14 a sort of glacis) has been found as deep as the bed of the river. The hills are clothed with a thick forest of trees, consisting of white, red and black oak, hickory, ash, chestnut, poplar, sassafras, dogwood, and the grape vine. The bottoms are covered with a heavy growth. The largest trees are button-wood, called here sycamore, elm, black walnut, tulip tree, and beach. The smaller trees consist of hickory, white walnut or butter-nut, locust, honey-locust, buck eye, mulberry, sugar-maple, cherry tree, crab-apple tree, plumb tree, papaw, and willow. The grape vine abounds on the bottoms, and grows to a prodigious size, ascending to the tops of the loftiest trees. The passenger, gliding down the river in the summer, is amused and delighted with the appearance of these vines on the upper branches and tops of the trees, forming large canopies, festoons, arbours, grottoes, with numerous other fantastic figures. Some of the trunks of these vines are of a size which will admit them to be split into four rails for fence.

The sugar-maple is a tree of immense value to the people of this State. It ought to be a first object with every man, when he begins to cultivate his land, as much as possible, to preserve these trees. Each tree, from eighteen to twenty inches in diameter, will yield four pounds of sugar every season. The process of making is to tap the tree with an auger, drive