On first arriving, I thought the many tree covered hills around,
very beautiful, but long before my departure, I felt so weary of
the confined view, that Salisbury Plain would have been an
agreeable variety. I doubt if any inhabitant of Cincinnati ever
mounted these hills so often as myself and my children; but it
was rather for the enjoyment of a freer air than for any beauty
of prospect, that we took our daily climb. These hills afford
neither shrubs nor flowers, but furnish the finest specimens of
millepore in the world; and the water courses are full of fossil
productions.
The forest trees are neither large nor well grown, and so close
as to be nearly knotted together at top; even the wild vine here
loses its beauty, for its graceful festoons bear leaves only when
they reach the higher branches of the tree that supports them,
both air and light being too scantily found below to admit of
their doing more than climbing with a bare stem till they reach a
better atmosphere. The herb we call pennyroyal was the only one
I found in abundance, and that only on the brows, where the
ground had been partially cleared; vegetation is impossible
elsewhere, and it is this circumstance which makes the "eternal
forests" of America so detestable. Near New Orleans the
undergrowth of Palmetto and pawpaw is highly beautiful, but in
Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio, I never found the slightest beauty
in the forest scenery. Fallen trees in every possible stage of
decay, and congeries of leaves that have been rotting since the
flood, cover the ground and infect the air.
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