362 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



green-leaved world are not to be found until we reach 

 the sequoias and red-woods of the Sierras. Among them 

 grow many other trees hackberry, thorn, honey locust, 

 tupelo, pecan and ash. In the cypress sloughs the singu- 

 lar knees of the trees stand two or three feet above the 

 black ooze. Palmettos grow thickly in places. The cane- 

 brakes stretch along the slight rises of ground, often ex- 

 tending for miles, forming one of the most striking and 

 interesting features of the country. They choke out other 

 growth, the feathery, graceful canes standing tall, slen- 

 der, serried, each but a few inches from his brother, and 

 springing to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. They look 

 like bamboos ; they are well-nigh impenetrable for a man 

 on horseback; even on foot they make difficult walking 

 unless free use is made of the heavy bushknife. It is im- 

 possible to see through them for more than fifteen or 

 twenty paces, and often for not half that distance. Bears 

 make their lairs in them, and they are the refuge for 

 hunted things. Outside of them, in the swamp, bushes 

 of many kinds grow thick among the tall trees, and vines 

 and creepers climb the trunks and hang in trailing fes- 

 toons from the branches. Here likewise the bushknife 

 is in constant play, as the skilled horsemen thread their 

 way, often at a gallop, in and out among the great tree 

 trunks, and through the dense, tangled, thorny under- 

 growth. 



In the lakes and larger bayous we saw alligators and 

 garfish; and monstrous snapping turtles, fearsome brutes 

 of the slime, as heavy as a man, and with huge horny 

 beaks that with a single snap could take off a man's hand 



