They are but the southern outposts of that forest army which begirds Hudson's Bay, and spreads its gloomy barrier of the same trees around the dominions of the Ice King, while it is the only forest to be met with in all the Mississippi Valley.
The width of about eighty feet-that theoretical road for which the United States had paid so often and so well-was seen between the mightiest sentinel trees; but in the midst had sprung up a fresh growth, often nearly one hundred feet high, surrounded by huge stumps, and heavy undergrowth of the renewing forest, varied with hopeless mudholes and swamps, and only at intervals of about twenty miles was there any habitation.
Such was the _great_military_road_. Perhaps its progress equalled the actual wants of this region; for population had not yet crowded any of the forest borders. It was then by the adjoining townships, under State laws, feebly commencing to be really made as a road; and frequently we halted at the camps of these hardy sons of toil.