IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES 361 



five to twenty feet under water. Cotton is the staple 

 industry, corn also being grown, while there are a few 

 rice fields and occasional small patches of sugar cane. 

 The plantations are for the most part of large size and 

 tilled by negro tenants for the white owners. Condi- 

 tions are still in some respects like those of the pioneer 

 days. The magnificent forest growth which covers the 

 land is of little value because of the difficulty in getting 

 the trees to market, and the land is actually worth more 

 after the timber has been removed than before. In con- 

 sequence, the larger trees are often killed by girdling, 

 where the work of felling them would entail dispropor- 

 tionate cost and labor. At dusk, with the sunset glimmer- 

 ing in the west, or in the brilliant moonlight when the 

 moon is full, the cotton fields have a strange spectral look, 

 with the dead trees raising aloft their naked branches. 

 The cotton fields themselves, when the bolls burst open, 

 seem almost as if whitened by snow; and the red and 

 white flowers, interspersed among the burst-open pods, 

 make the whole field beautiful. The rambling one-story 

 houses, surrounded by outbuildings, have a picturesque- 

 ness all their own; their very looks betoken the lavish, 

 whole-hearted, generous hospitality of the planters who 

 dwell therein. 



Beyond the end of cultivation towers the great forest. 

 Wherever the water stands in pools, and by the edges of 

 the lakes and bayous, the giant cypress looms aloft, 

 rivalled in size by some of the red gums and white oaks. 

 In stature, in towering majesty, they are unsurpassed by 

 any trees of our eastern forests; lordlier kings of the 



