122 THE HERONRIES OF AMERICA. 



retreats : these they find near the sea-shore, especially in Noi-th and 

 South Carolina, in low swampy levels, the haunt of yellow fever. 

 Such morasses — an ancient arm of the sea or a river, an old swamp 

 left behind in the gi-adual recession of the waters — extend sometimes 

 over a length of five or six miles, and a breadth of one mile. The 

 entry is not very inviting : a barrier of trees confronts you, their 

 trunks perfectly upright and stripped of bi-anches, fifty or sixty feet 

 high, and bare to the very summit, where they mingle and bring to- 

 gether their leafy arches of sombre gi*een, so as to shed upon the 

 waters an ominous twilight. What waters ! A seething mass of 

 leaves and debris, where the old stems rise pell-mell one upon another ; 

 the whole of a muddy yellow colour, coated on the surface with a 

 gi-een frothy moss. Advance, and the seemingly firm expanse is a 

 quicksand, into which you plunge. A laurel-tree at each step inter- 

 cepts you ; you cannot pass without a painful struggle with their 

 branches, with wi'ecks of trees, with laurels constantly springing up 

 afresh. Rare gleams of light shoot athwart the darkness, and the 

 silence of death prevails in these terrible regions. Except the mel- 

 ancholy notes of two or three small birds, which you catch at intervals, 

 or the hoarse cry of the heron, all is dumb and desolate ; but when 

 the wind rises, from the summit of the trees comes the heron's moans 

 and sighs. If the storm bursts, these great naked cedars, these tall 

 "ammiral's masts," waver and clash together; the forest roars, cries, 

 groans, and imitates with singular exactness the voices of wolves, and 

 bears, and all the beasts of pre}^. 



It was not then without astonishment that, about 1805, the heron, 

 thus securely settled, saw a rare face, a man's, roaming under their 

 cedars, and in the open swamp. One man alone was capable of visiting 

 them in their haunts, a patient indefatigable traveller, no less courageous 

 than peaceable — the friend and the admirer of birds, Alexander Wilson. 



If these people had been acquainted with their visitor's character, 

 far from feeling terrified at his appearance, they would undoubtedly 

 have gone forth to meet him, and, with clapping of wings and loud 

 cries, have given him an amicable salute, a fraternal ovation. 



