silent haunts. These forests were very heavy overhead. The boughs were closely matted, in a life-and-death struggle for light and air. The forest vines bound them yet more inextricably together, until it was almost impossible to fell a tree with out first severing the huge arms which were bound fast to its neighbors. This dense overgrowth had an important influence over the pioneer traveler. It made the space beneath dark; the gloom of a real forest is never forgotten by the "tenderfoot" lumberman. The dense covering overhead made the forests extremely hot in the dog days of summer; no one can appreciate what "hot weather" means in a forest where the wind cannot descend through the trees save those who know our oldest forests. What made the forests hot in summer, on the other hand, tended to protect them from winter winds in cold weather. Yet, as a rule, there was little pioneer traveling in the Allegheny forests in winter. From May until November came the months of heaviest traffic on the first widened trails through these gloomy, heated forest aisles.
