one or two o'clock in the morning by the uproarious company, and
the best refreshment of the house would be forced upon him with a
hilarity "created by omnipotent whiskey." Sometimes, however, the
traveler would encounter pitiful instances of loneliness in the
widespreading forests. One man in passing a certain isolated
cabin was implored by the woman who inhabited it to rest awhile
and talk, since she was, she confessed, completely overwhelmed by
"the lone!"

Every traveler has remarked upon the yellow pallor of the first
inhabitants of the western forests and doubtless correctly
attributed this sickly appearance to the effects of malaria and
miasma. The psychic influences of the forest wilderness also
weighed heavily upon the spirits of the settlers, although, as
Baily notes, it was the newcomers who felt the depression to an
exaggerated degree. As he says:

"It is a feeling of confinement, which begins to damp the
spirits, from this complete exclusion of distant objects. To
travel day after day, among trees of a hundred feet high, is
oppressive to a degree which those cannot conceive who have not
experienced it; and it must depress the spirits of the solitary
settler to pass years in this state. His visible horizon extends
no farther than the tops of the trees which bound his plantation-
-perhaps five hundred yards. Upwards he sees the sun, and sky,
and stars, but around him an eternal forest, from which he can
never hope to emerge:---not so in a thickly settled district; he
cannot there enjoy any freedom of prospect, yet there is variety,
and some scope for the imprisoned vision. In a hilly country a
little more range of view may occasionally be obtained; and a