58 <.!{!; AT 1 1 T, RON. 



tudcs oi the tallest cedar swamps, where, if unmolested, they 

 continue annually to breed for many years. These swamps are 

 from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and sometimes five or six 

 in length, and appear as if they occupied the former channel of 

 some choked up river, stream, lake, or arm of the sea. The ap- 

 pearance they present to a stranger is singular. A front of tall 

 and perfectly strait trunks, rising to the height of fifty or sixty 

 feet without a limb, and crowded in every direction, their tops 

 so closely woven together as to shut out the day, spreading the 

 gloom of perpetual twilight below. On a nearer approach they 

 are found to rise out of the water, which, from the impregnation 

 of the fallen leaves and roots of the cedars, is of the colour of 

 brandy. Amidst this bottom of congregated springs, the ruins 

 of the former forest lie piled in every state of confusion. The 

 roots, prostrate logs, and in many places the water, are covered 

 with green mantling moss, while an undergrowth of laurel, 

 fifteen or twenty feet high, intersects every opening so com- 

 pletely, as to render a passage through laborious and harrassing 

 beyond description; at every step you either sink to the knees, 

 clamber over fallen timber, squeeze yourself through between 

 the stubborn laurels, or plunge to the middle in ponds made by 

 the uprooting of large trees, and which the green moss conceal- 

 ed from observation. In calm weather the silence of death 

 reigns in these dreary regions; a few interrupted rays of light 

 shoot across the gloom; and unless for the occasional hollow 

 screams of the Herons, and the melancholy chirping of one or 

 two species of small birds, all is silence, solitude and desolation. 

 When a breeze rises, at first it sighs mournfully through the 

 tops; but as the gale increases, the tall mast-like cedars wave 

 like fishing poles, and rubbing against each other, produce a 

 variety of singular noises, that, with the help of a little imagi- 

 nation, resemble shrieks, groans, growling of bears, wolves and 

 such like comfortable music. 



On the tops of the tallest of these cedars the Herons construct 

 their nests, ten or fifteen pair sometimes occupying a particular 

 part of the swamp The nests arc large, formed of sticks, and 



