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 rnoss, 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 (Ndumbium 

 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 rubbing against one an- 

 other. More articulate noises strike your ear the sharp- 

 clucking lectures on propriety of the mud-hen to its young ; 

 the ^rek-Ttek-Ttek) 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 laughter of those 

 little elves, the marsh-wrens, teetering on the elastic leaves 

 of the cat-tails. 



