They walked through a wilderness, and here they had elbowroom, a feeling of space in which to move freely. The path they followed resembled the cattle paths at home, but this path was not made by domestic animals, it was trodden by wild animals and wild people. They followed the paths of Indians and deer, of hunters and beasts. They were on the hunting trails which had been followed for thousands and thousands of years. But they were homeless wanderers without weapons, not looking for game or following animals’ footprints. They only followed a trail that would, they hoped, lead them to new homes.
Their path was along a winding ridge of sandstone, and this ridge followed the river. On their left extended a valley, on their right flowed the river that was to guide them. At the beginning of their walk, the forest near the river had been cut down in great sections and these seemed to them like graveyards, with their high, carelessly cut stumps resembling tombstones. But after a few hours they reached sandy plains with tall, straight, branchless trees, topped with lush dark-green crowns. Here each tree was a mast tree, capable of carrying sails across the world’s greatest oceans. On the foothills to their left were groves of leaf-trees, like a woof through which broke the darker warp of the pine forest. Here they discovered all the trees which each spring budded anew in Sweden: oaks and birches side by side, trembling aspens, elms, and lindens intertwined their branches with maples and ash trees; here and there they also espied the hazel bush. Of smaller trees, crouching under the tall ones, they recognized willow branches stretching above bushes of sloeberries, blackberries, and wild roses. Here lay fertile ground overgrown with underbrush of innumerable varieties whose branches, leaves, and clinging vines were intertwined, making one heavy impenetrable thicket, a living wall of greenery.
In these extensive thickets they discovered many thorny bushes that were new to them. They stopped now and then to inspect more closely some tree or bush which they didn’t recognize. They would scratch the bark, or break off a small branch, or gather a handful of leaves, and try to guess the kind of tree or bush to which these might be related.
As far as they could judge, here grew everything in God’s creation: trees for all their needs: for house timbers, floor planks and roof, for benches and tables, for implements of all kinds, and for firewood. The dead trees rotted in the places where they had fallen, never had a stump been removed, never had a dead tree been cut. All old bare trees remained standing, an unattractive sight with their naked, bark-shedding limbs in this healthy, living forest. Indeed, there were enough dead pines here for firewood for a thousand fireplaces for a thousand winters through. The forest was uncared-for, neglected, but it had cared for itself while living and covering the ground: it had died and lived again, completing its cycle: undisturbed and unmarked by man’s edged tools, it had fallen with its loosened roots decaying on the ground and disintegating among grass and moss, returning again to the earth from which it had sprung.
The farther into the wilderness the immigrants pushed their way the denser grew the oaks. In one day they had seen more oaks on root than in their whole lives before. At home the oak was the royal tree — King and Crown had from old claimed the first right to it, while the peasants had to be satisfied with poorer and less sturdy trees. At home the noble oak tree was nursed like a thoroughbred colt. Here they walked through an oak forest that stretched for miles. And when their trail brought them atop a knoll, they saw across the western valley a whole sea of oak crowns, wreathed together until they appeared like one many-miles-wide crown of rich foliage. Here was a whole region — wide as a county at home — entirely filled with royal trees. In their fertile valley the oaks had for countless centuries grown straight and proud through their youth and maturity and quietly rotted in their old age. No Crown-sheriffs had disturbed them with marking axes, no despotic king had exacted timber for his fortifications and men-of-war. In this heathen land the royal tree had remained untouched and unviolated, here it displayed its mane of thick foliage, the lion among trees.
The landscape changed often and quickly, with hills and dales on both sides. They came to an open glade with still more fertile ground: here herbs and grass prevailed rather than trees and bushes. Here grew crab apple and wild plum, the heavy fruit bending the overladen boughs. Between thickets of berry bushes the ground was covered with wild roses, honeysuckle, sweet fern and many flowers. Here throve in abundance a lower growth of fruit and berry plants: blueberries, raspberries, currant bushes, black as well as red. And the berry vine did not crawl retarded along the ground in thread-thin runners as in the forests at home; here it rose on thick stems covered with healthy leaves, thriving as though planted in a well-fertilized cabbage bed. The blueberry bushes were flourishing with berries as large as the end of one’s thumb, as easy to pick as gooseberries.
They would cross a meadow with fodder-rich grass reaching to their waists. Here the ground lay as smooth and even as a floor in a royal palace. No stone was visible, no scythe had ever cut this grass; since the time of creation this hay meadow had been waiting for the harvesters.
They climbed over brooks and streams where fallen trunks lay like bridges, they saw a tarn into which branches and other debris had fallen in such great quantity that it filled the lake completely, rising above the surface, a picture of death-haunted desolation. They walked by small lakes with tall grass all around the edges, the water bubbling and boiling with wriggling fins. They stopped and looked at the fish playing. The water was so clear they could see to the bottom where the sand glittered in the sun like gold. And they mused over this clear blue lake water, seemingly taking its color from the skies above.
In one opening they came upon a herd of grazing deer, sleek-antlered animals with light-red fur and short white tails. Fleet-footed, the deer fled softly, their tails tipping up and down. The immigrants had already tasted their meat, they knew how tender and delicious it was. Now and again a long-eared rabbit disappeared into the grass directly at their feet. Known and unknown forest birds took flight along their path, on the lakes swam flocks of ducks, undisturbed by their passing, and several times they heard the potent, whizzing sound of many wings in flight: flocks of bluish doves flew over their heads.
In this wilderness there was plenty of game; in the water, on the ground, and in the air there was meat, fowl, and fish. Many a meal had run past them into the forest, swum away into the depths of the lakes, flown away into the air.
The immigrants had reached a lush country, fertile and rich earth, a land well suited for settling. Here people could find their sustenance if anywhere on earth. Yet nowhere did they see tilled fields, nowhere a furrow turned, nowhere a prepared building site. No trees had been blazed to mark a settler’s claim. This was a country for people to settle in, but as yet few settlers had come.
The group from Sweden walked along an unknown path in an unknown region, with no guide except the river; but they felt less insecure and put down their feet with more confidence than at any time before in the new country. They were walking in accustomed ways through old-country landscapes. They walked through a forest, they tramped on tree roots, moss, and grass, they moved among pungent foliage, soft leaves, herbs, among growing things on earth, its running and flying game, and they began to feel at home.