单选题 JOHNNY APPLESEED

1 In 1801, a 26-year-old man named John Chapman wandered the sparsely populated "western country" that was still two years away from becoming the state of Ohio. Chapman had a simple purpose: wherever he found suitable soil, he planted apple seeds. To the settlers of the Ohio frontier, Chapman became known as Johnny Appleseed, a strange man who wore odd clothes and went barefoot. He was a pacifist in a time of warfare and brutality against the Indians, treating Indians and settlers alike with respect. He killed no animals and was a vegetarian. He even opposed pruning his apple trees because he did not want to cause them pain.
2 Chapman spent forty years wandering as Johnny Appleseed. Journeying by foot and canoe through Ohio and Indiana, he planted seeds, sold and gave away apple saplings, and exchanged knowledge of medicinal plants with Indians and settlers. He prepared the way for farms and towns by planting apple seeds in clearings along rivers and constructing simple wooden fences to keep animals out of his primitive orchards.
3 The agricultural development that Chapman anticipated was in fact marching across the eastern half of the continent at an ever-increasing pace. When Chapman started his "apple seeding" in 1801, the population of Ohio was 45,000, and ninety percent of the land was still covered with elm, ash, maple, oak, and hickory trees. By the time of Chapman's death in 1845, the state's population had reached two million, and more than forty percent of the land had been cleared of trees and converted to farms. Not until 1880 did the cutting of trees subside. By then, three-quarters of Ohio had been cleared, and people were becoming aware of the limits of expansion. Only then did they begin to take seriously the tree-loving ideas of Johnny Appleseed, who had become the subject of folk tales.