The greater part of the breadth is occupied by the zone of the forest, the willow brakes, and the shrubbery of the bank—I find myself hunting for a word which will more perfectly fix and define this wonderful terrain than the word wood, and yet I am unable to find one. There can be no talk of a wood in the usual sense of the term—a kind of great pillared grove with moss and strewn leafage and tree-trunks of fairly uniform girth. The trees in our hunting-grounds are of different ages and circumference. Huge patriarchs of the willow and poplar families are to be found among them, especially along the river, though they are also to be encountered in the inner woods. Then there are others already full-grown which might be ten or fifteen years old, and finally a legion of thin stems—wild nurseries of nature’s own crop of young ashes, birches, and elders. These do not, however, call forth any impression of meagreness, because, as I have already indicated, they are all thickly wrapped about with creepers. These give an air of almost tropical luxuriance to the whole. Yet I suspect that these creepers hinder the growth of their hosts, for during the years I have lived here, I do not remember having observed that any of these little stems had grown perceptibly thicker.
All trees belong to a closely-related species. The alder is a member of the birch family; in the last analysis the poplar is nothing else than a willow. And one might even say that all of them approach the fundamental type of the latter. All foresters and woodmen know that trees are quite ready to accept a certain adaptation to the character of the circumjacent vicinity—a certain imitation or mimicry of the dominant taste in lines and forms. It is the fantastic, witch-like, distorted line of the willow which prevails here—this faithful companion and attendant of still and of flowing waters, with the crooked finger, projecting, broom-like, branching boughs, and it is these features which the others obviously seek to imitate. The silver poplar crooks herself wholly in the style of the willow, and it is often difficult to tell her from the birch which, seduced by the genius loci, also frequently affects the most extravagant crookednesses—though I would not go so far as to say that this dear and friendly tree was not to be found, and numerously found, in exceedingly shapely specimens. These, when the afternoon light is fervent and favourable, are even most enchanting to the eye.
The region knows it as a small silvery trunk with sparse single leaves in the crown, as a sweet grown-up limber virgin with the prettiest of chalky stems and a trim and languishing way of letting the locks of her foliage hang. But it also makes its appearance as a creature of absolutely elephantine proportions with a waist which no man could span with his arms and a rind which has preserved traces of its erstwhile whiteness only high up towards the top, whilst near the ground it has become a coarse, calcined and fissured bark.
As to the soil—this has little resemblance to that of a forest. It is pebbly, full of clay and even sand, and no one would dream of calling it fertile. And yet within limits it is fertile—even to luxuriance. A tall grass flourishes upon it, though this often assumes a dry, sharply angular and meagre character. In winter it covers the ground like trampled hay. Sometimes it degenerates into reeds, whilst in other parts it is soft, thick, and lush, mixed with hemlock, nettles, colt’s foot, all manner of creeping, leafy stuff, high, rocket-like thistles, and young and tender tree-shoots. It is a favourite hiding-place for pheasants and quail, and the vegetation runs in billows against the gnarled boles of the tree-roots. Out of this chaos of undergrowth and ground thicket the wild vine and the wild hop-plant go gyrating up in spirals, draping broad-leaved garlands upon the trees and even in winter clinging to the trunks with tendrils which resemble hard and unbreakable wire.
This domain is neither forest nor park—it is an enchanted garden—nothing less. I will stoutly defend this term—even though it refers to a poor, limited, and even crippled bit of nature, the glories of which may be exhausted with a few simple botanical names. The ground is undulant; it rises and falls in regular waves. This feature gives a fine completeness to the views—the eye is led into the illimitable even at the sides. Yes, even if this wood were to stretch for miles to the right and left, even if it were to be as broad as it is long, instead of merely measuring a hundred and some odd paces from the centre to the extreme edge on either side, one could not feel more secluded, more lost, or isolated. Alone the ear is reminded by the regular and rushing sound of waters to the west that the river hovers within a friendly distance, near yet invisible. There are little gulches filled to the brim with bushes of elder, common privet, jasmine, and black elderberry, so that one’s lungs on steamy June days are almost overcome by perfume.
