344 THE .ESTHETICS OF 



the grey, gloomy November air ; as a reverse to this, the 

 Brazilian traveller wanders in the glowing heat through the 

 Gating as, woods which through the drying influence of the 

 sun are defoliated in summer, and with their bare branches 

 contrast strangely with the fresh luxuriant green on the 

 banks of some little brook, or against the succulent, fleshy 

 masses of the Cactuses untouched by the burning heat. 

 But even in the freshest foliage the woods may assume the 

 character of awful and terrible wildness. When the dense 

 foliage hinders the action of the sun and the refreshing 

 breeze, and thus retards the decomposition of the vegetable 

 masses, where the ground, flat and without any declivity, 

 allows the accumulation of water, and the more since the 

 heaped-up bodies of dead plants continually increase the 

 barriers to the efflux, and the humus formed greedily sucks 

 up the moisture there are formed the most extensive 

 swamps. By the progressive accession of the remains of 

 vegetation the ground becomes elevated, and such spongy, 

 semi-fluid masses often lie, at length, far above the level of 

 the surrounding plain, the sun's heat never sufficing, even 

 when storms remove the protecting roof, to dry up the 

 marsh, or to restrain its increase. Such a swamp rises 

 twelve feet above the surrounding plains in Virginia, be- 

 tween the towns of Suffolk and Walden, and is called 

 by the inhabitants " the great Dismal," giving origin to 

 considerable rivers and supplying them with water. The 

 North American Cypress* it is, which with its delicate but 

 dense foliage gives rise to the formation of these structures. 

 It is the same tree which forms the terrible, evilly-re- 

 renowned Cypress-swamps of Louisiana, on the banks of 

 the Red River and the Mississippi. Gigantic trunks of un- 



* Cupressus disticha. 



