Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/75



EARS ago the lumbermen had spread their blight over Tiger Swamp. That blight would be long in passing. Not for cen turies, if ever again, would the swamp be what it was before the axmen's coming. The towering straight-trunked cypresses were gone; gone, too, were the mighty pines which once grew all along the swamp's edges, pines which soared seventy feet without a limb. But the place was green again, the scars that had disfigured it were no longer visible. In fact, it was greener than it had ever been in its prime, for now that the great trees which had shaded it were no more, undergrowths of a dozen different kinds could find the sunlight which they needed.

Out of these undergrowths which had come into being since the murder of the trees, out of thickets of myrtle and bay and tangles of blackberry and Cherokee rose, wild nature laughed at the mastery of Man. He had despoiled her, had he? He had slaughtered her noblest trees and swept away the virgin forest which she had created through long