Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/74

 The kindling a fire and spreading our buffalo skins was too frank an advance to be resisted. The fire and smoke seemed to tame the scene. The rocks consented to be our walls, and the pines our roof.

Already we stood upon the verge of the forest, with such right as the aborigines of the country. A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place; as the oaks among the Druids, and the grove of Egeria; and what is Robin Hood without his Barnsdale and Sherwood? It is the life that is lived in the unexplored scenery of the wood that charms us. The oldest villagers are more indebted to the neighborhood of wild Nature than to the operations of man's creation.

There is something indescribably wild and beautiful in the aspect of the forests, skirting and occasionally getting in to the midst of new towns; which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of Nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine still flourishes and the jay still screams. So near us is [26]