The great trees towered aloft till their separate heads were lost in the mass of foliage above, and the rank underbrush choked the spaces between the trunks.

On the higher peaks and ridge-crests of the mountains there were straggling birches and pines, hemlocks and balsam firs;[22] elsewhere, oaks, chestnuts, hickories, maples, beeches, walnuts, and great tulip trees grew side by side with many other kinds.

The sunlight could not penetrate the roofed archway of murmuring leaves; through the gray aisles of the forest men walked always in a kind of mid-day gloaming.
Those who had lived in the open plains felt when they came to the backwoods as if their heads were hooded.

Save on the border of a lake, from a cliff top, or on a bald knob--that is, a bare hill-shoulder,--they could not anywhere look out for any distance.
All the land was shrouded in one vast forest.

It covered the mountains from crest to river-bed, filled the plains, and stretched in sombre and melancholy wastes towards the Mississippi.