48 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
level that it is a constant struggle whether land or water 
shall prevail. The river finds its way to the broad harbor 
through a dozen or more channels, between which are low 
islands overgrown with great trees burdened and festooned 
with grape-vines and moss, and tangled with thickets and 
rank fern-brakes, or growths of wild rice and luxuriant wa- 
ter-weeds so dense and tall as to be impenetrable even to a 
canoe. Here blooms the magnificent lotus (Welumbium 
luteum), with its corolla as large as your hat and its leaf — 
half a boat-length broad—great banks of it, giving out a 
faint, sweet, soporific, almost intoxicating odor. 
Curious sounds reach you as you thread the mazes of the 
swamp. The water boils up from the oozy bottom, and the 
bubbles break at the surface with a faint, lisping sound ; 
the reeds softly rattle against one another like the rustle of 
heavy silks, and you can hear the lily-pads and deeply-an- 
chored stems of the water-weeds rnbbing against one an- 
other. More articulate noises strike your ear—the sharp- 
clucking lectures on propriety of the mud-hen to its young; 
the brek-kek-kek, coaz-coaz of the frog; the splash of a tum- 
bling turtle; the rushing of a flock of startled ducks rising 
on swift wings; the sprightly, contagious langhter of those 
little elves, the marsh-wrens, teetering on the elastic leaves 
of the cat-tails. 
