In some places however a more summary process is attempted. It may be conceived that in the woods the cutting down trees singly is a matter of much difficulty on account of the twining plants which spread from one to the other and connect them strongly together. To surmount this it is not an uncommon practice to cut a number of trees half through, on the same side, and then fix upon one of great bulk at the extremity of the space marked out, which they cut nearly through, and, having disengaged it from these lianas (as they are termed in the western world) determine its fall in such a direction as may produce the effect of its bearing down by its prodigious weight all those trees which had been previously weakened for the purpose. By this much time and labour are saved, and, the object being to destroy and not to save the timber, the rending or otherwise spoiling the stems is of no moment. I could never behold this devastation without a strong sentiment of regret. Perhaps the prejudices of a classical education taught me to respect those aged trees as the habitation or material frame of an order of sylvan deities, who were now deprived of existence by the sacrilegious hand of a rude, undistinguishing savage. But without having recourse to superstition it is not difficult to account for such feelings on the sight of a venerable wood, old, to appearance, as the soil it stood on, and beautiful beyond what pencil can describe, annihilated for the temporary use of the space it occupied. It seemed a violation of nature in the too arbitrary exercise of power. The timber, from its abundance, the smallness of consumption, and its distance in most cases from the banks of navigable rivers, by which means alone it could be transported to any distance, is of no value; and trees whose bulk, height, straightness of stem, and extent of limbs excite the admiration of a traveller, perish indiscriminately. Some of the branches are lopped off, and when these, together with the underwood, are become sufficiently arid, they are set fire to, and the country, for the space of a month or two, is in a general blaze and smoke, until the whole is consumed and the ground effectually cleared. The expiring wood, beneficent to its ungrateful destroyer, fertilises for his use by its ashes and their salts the earth which it so long adorned.