A tree-trunk overthrown in a storm.
1840. A windfall upon the hillside was to be traversed next. The uprooted trees, wrenched from their ancient seats by the tornado’s force, lay with their twisted stems, their boughs fast locked together, their enormous roots turned vertically to the sky, with fragments of rock and clay matted by their fibres, and walling one side of the pit from which they had been upturned, while barriers of rankly-grown briers enclosed the others.—C. F. Hoffman, ‘Greyslaer,’ ii. 42. (Italics in the original.)
1851. After an untold number of stumbles over old windfalls, and jibes from the limbs, knots, and protruding boughs of trees, we reached [the log cabin].—John S. Springer, ‘Forest Life,’ p. 66 (N.Y.).
1851. Now penetrating dense thickets, then leaping high “windfalls,” and struggling through swamp-mires, [the deer] finally fell through exhaustion.—Id., p. 125.
