lonely roads, and frowned upon the scattered settlements. Persons
whose lives have been passed where the surface has long been opened,
and the land generally cleared, little know the power of a primitive
wilderness upon the mind. There is nothing more impressive than its
sombre shadows and gloomy recesses. The solitary wanderer is ever and
anon startled by the strange, mysterious sounds that issue from its
hidden depths. The distant fall of an ancient and decayed trunk, or
the tread of animals as they prowl over the mouldering branches with
which the ground is strown; the fluttering of unseen birds brushing
through the foliage, or the moaning of the wind sweeping over the
topmost boughs,--these all tend to excite the imagination and
solemnize the mind. But the stillness of a forest is more startling
and awe-inspiring than its sounds. Its silence is so deep as itself to
become audible to the inner soul. It is not surprising that wooded
countries have been the fruitful fountains and nurseries of
superstition.

"In such a place as this, at such an hour,
If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man,
And told the secrets of the world unknown."

The forests which surrounded our ancestors were the abode of a
mysterious race of men of strange demeanor and unascertained origin.
The aspects they presented, the stories told of them, and every thing
connected with them, served to awaken fear, bewilder the imagination,
and aggravate the tendencies of the general condition of things to
fanatical enthusiasm.

It was the common belief, sanctioned, as will appear in the course of