Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/108

106 places prevails to the exclusion of every other — oak, hickory, sassafras, and many others are found.

Here, also, I first observed groves of the most beautiful of all the trees of the wood — the great Southern Magnolia, or Green Bay. No adequate conception can be formed of the appearance or the fragrance of this most magnificent tree, by any one who has not seen it or scented the air when scented by the perfume of its flowers. It rises in a right line to the height of seventy or eighty feet; the stem is of a delicate taper form and casts off numerous branches, in nearly right angles with itself; the extremities of which decline gently towards the ground, and become shorter and shorter in the ascent, until at the apex of the tree they are scarcely a foot in length, whilst below they are many times found twenty feet long. The immense cones formed by these trees are as perfect as those diminutive forms which nature exhibits in the bur of the pine tree. The leaf of the Magnolia is smooth, of an oblong taper form, about six inches in length, and half as broad. Its color is the deepest and purest green. The foliage of the Bay tree is as impervious as a brick wall to the rays of the sun, and its refreshing coolness, in the heat of a summer day, affords one of the greatest luxuries of a cotton plantation. It blooms in May, and bears great numbers of broad, expanded white flowers, the odor of which is exceedingly