Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/179

 They give the name of river-bottoms and flat-bottoms to the flat and woody ground between the foot of these mountains and the banks of the river, the space of which is sometimes five or six miles broad. The major part of the rivers which empty themselves into the Ohio have also these river-bottoms, which, as well as those in question, are of an easy culture, but nothing equal to the fertility of the banks of the Ohio. The soil is a true vegetable humus, produced by the thick bed of leaves with which the earth is loaded every year, and which is speedily converted into mould by the humidity that reigns in these forests. But what adds still more to the thickness of these successive beds of vegetable {86} earth are the trunks of enormous trees, thrown down by time, with which the surface of the soil is bestrewed in every part, and which rapidly decays. In more than a thousand leagues of the country, over which I have travelled at different epochs, in North America, I do not remember having seen one to compare with the latter for the vegetative strength of the forests. The best sort of land in Kentucky and Tenessea, situated beyond the mountains of Cumberland, is much the same; but the trees do not grow to such a size as on the borders of the Ohio. Thirty-six miles before our arrival at Marietta we stopped at the hut of one of the inhabitants of the right bank, who shewed us, about fifty yards from his door, a palm-tree, or platanus occidentalis, the trunk of which was swelled to an amazing size; we measured it four feet beyond the surface of the soil, and found it forty-seven feet in circumference. It appeared to keep the same dimensions for the height of fifteen or twenty feet, it then divided into several branches of a proportionate size. By its external appearance no one could tell that the tree was hollow;