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Show NEW HARMONY----CUT-OFF RIVER----THE FORESTS. 75 Harmony is now a large village, with about 600 inhabitants; the buildings, which are partly of brick, are detached from each other; the streets are at right angles, broad, and unpaved. The church built by Mr. Rapp has been transformed into an amateur theatre. The situation of Harmony is by no means unpleasant. The Wabash, a fine river, as broad as the Moselle, winds between banks which are now cultivated, but were lately covered with thick forests. A hilly tract, covered with woods, bounds the valley of the Wabash, which is frequently overflowed by the river, and thereby gains in fertility. The place itself lies rather higher than the valley, surrounded by orchards, and is not exposed to inundations. The Wabash divides at Harmony into two arms, the eastern of which is called Cut-off River (Vig. VIII.), and further down into several branches, forming many wooded islands, the largest of which are inhabited. New Harmony (Plate II.), is surrounded on all sides by fields, which are from 600 to 800 paces in diameter; all around are lofty forests, where settlers have everywhere cultivated detache d patches. These people are generally called backwoodsmen, who live like half savages, without any education or religious instruction. The forests which they inhabit are very extensive, and the soil extremely fertile : vegetation is much more luxuriant than to the east of the Alleghanys; and, therefore, a short description of the natural productions of the country will not be out of place here. Some remarkable peculiarities strike the observer when he looks at the forests on the Wabash ; one of these is the want of evergreens, if we except the Viscum fiavescens, Pursh, Bignonia cruciata, Equisetum hyemale, and Miegia macrosperma. The leaves of that bignonia, for the most part, remain green in the winter, as well as those of the miegia, and the stalks of the Equisetum hyemale, at least, in mild winters, which often grow to the height of eight or ten feet in the dry forests. The planes often attain an enormous size, and are then generally hollow, and divided into several colossal branches. We measured several of these trees, and found one that was forty one feet five inches in circumference. The hollow inside was twelve feet in diameter, so that in our winter excursions we used to light a fire in it, where we sheltered from the wind. Tall tulip trees shoot up straight as masts, blossom, and bear seeds at their summits, unseen by human eye. Maples of great height and circumference, many species of oak, especially the mossy overcap oak (Q. macrocarpa), with its large acorns, which, at this time, lay on the ground, stand crowded together. A great many species of trees are mixed together; among them the Gymnocladus Cana-densis, or Guilandina Bonduc, with its broad pods, the divers kinds of walnut trees, the Gledifschia tricanthos, with its formidable thorns; and many climbing plants twine round the trunks, and among them, the most beautiful of all, the Bignonia radicans. In the forests of Indiana the ground is covered with a thick undergrowth, fifteen, twenty, or thirty feet high, consisting chiefly of the papaw tree, the spinewood (Laurus Benzoin), and the red bud ; the flowers of the two latter precede the leaf. Under these lower trees, shrubs cover |