130 WILD SPORTS IN THE FAR WEST. 



ten miles long did not sound pleasant. We had to beg 

 hard and pay high for a morsel of bread to quiet our 

 appetite, the man declaring that he had nothing else for 

 himself. 



Blackfish lake is a desolate, melancholy-looking, 

 coffee-colored piece of water, several miles long, and 

 some hundreds of yards wide, and its gloom is in- 

 creased by overhanging cypresses. It is said to be 

 full of snakes and other reptiles. Arrived on the 

 opposite side, we had not to look out long for the 

 swamp. It was straight before our eyes. In point of 

 fact, the whole land we had passed through was very 

 like a swamp, but hitherto there had been a broad 

 ehaussce, running in a direct line through the State of 

 Arkansas, from east to west, from Memphis, in Ten- 

 nessee, to Batesville ; but on the west bank of Black- 

 fish lake it was not yet cut through the forest, nor 

 raised above the swamp. We were now to enter 

 the recesses of the primeval forest. And what a forest ! 

 and what a journey ! A load of from sixty to seventy 

 pounds on our shoulders, soft mud under our feet, the 

 heat of the sun increasing, the swamp giving out a hot 

 suffocating air ! Such was our enviable' position. We 

 had hardly worked our way for a quarter of a mile 

 through mud and thorns, when we were obliged to sit 

 down and rest ; but rest was also a torment ; there was 

 not a breath of wind to refresh us, and the. moment we 

 stopped millions of mosquitoes attacked us. The water 

 was lukewarm, and we had t<> suck it up from pools 

 covered with slime. If we left the regular puih. which 

 was the most imiddv, and tried a >l;ort cut through the. 

 wood, we were caught at every step by the thorns and 



