Anyone with access to “old books” knows that’s nonsense.

Constantin-Francois Volney (View of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America, 1804) wrote …
“To a European traveller, and more especially to one accustomed like me to the naked lands of Egypt, of Asia, and on the borders of the Mediterranean, the prominent feature of the American soil is a wild appearance of almost uninterrupted forest, which displays itself on the shores of the sea, and continues growing thicker and thicker as you proceed into the interior of the country. During the long journey I made in 1796, from the mouth of the Delaware through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, to the river Wabash; thence to the north, through the Northwestern Territory, as far as Fort Detroit; then by the way of Lake Erie to Niagara and Albany; and the year following from Boston to Richmond in Virginia; I scarce travelled three miles together on open and cleared land. Every where I found the roads, or rather paths, bordered and overshadowed with coppices or tall trees; the silence and sameness of which, the soil in some places parched up, in others marshy, trees fallen through age, or blown down by storms, and rotting on the ground, with the tormenting swarms of breeze-flies, moschettoes, and gnats, do not possess all the charms, that our romance-writers dream of amid the smoke of a city in Europe. It is true, on the shores of the Atlantic this continental forest displays some openings, formed by the brackish marshes, and the cultivated fields that are continually extending round the absorbing focus of the cities. It has also considerable vacancies in the western countries, particularly from the Wabash to the Mississippi, toward the borders of Lake Erie and the river St. Lawrence, in Kentucky, and in Tenessee [Tennessee]; where the nature of the soil, and still more the ancient conflagrations of the savages, have produced spacious deserts, called savannahs by the Spaniards, and prairies by the Canadians, as also by the Americans, who have adopted this word. These deserts I cannot compare with those I have seen in Syria and Arabia, but rather with what are called the steps or deserts of Tatary; the savannahs, like the steps, being covered with thick shrubby plants, three or four feet high, exhibiting during summer and autumn a rich tapestry of verdure and flowers, very seldom to be seen in the bare and naked deserts of Arabia. Throughout the rest of the United States, particularly in the mountainous parts of the interior country, from which the rivers flow in opposite directions, some to the Atlantic, others to the Mississippi, the realms of forest have experienced but slight infringements on their domain; and compared with France we may say, that the entire country is one vast wood.”