THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP 155 



swamp maples, pines that cling to hassocks which 

 lift them enough above water-level to enable them 

 to survive, larches. To avoid the black ooze or 

 the streams of dark water that never seem to flow, 

 giving no aid to the sense of direction, you try to 

 leap from hassock to jiggling hassock of the swamp 

 grass, or the clumps of matted fern roots. Some- 

 times you do not succeed. Around your face buzz 

 mosquitoes and tiny, annoying flies. You are ex- 

 tremely warm, for there is no breeze in here, and 

 being rubber clad to the waist on a hot June day 

 does not make for comfort. The vast uniformity 

 of the swamp, and the slight distance in which your 

 eye can cover the ground in any one direction, give 

 to the searcher who does not know his country well, 

 or is new to the game, a sense of hopelessness. 

 Which is as it should be. 



We did not know the swamp we entered one after- 

 noon last June, and after beating it from end to end 

 a matter of a mile or more and back again, in vain, 

 I advocated giving up the search. My reason, how- 

 ever, was not discouragement. It was the exhaus- 

 tion of my tobacco supply and the inexhaustibility 

 of the mosquito supply. Only one woman in the 

 party opposed my suggestion, but what are two 

 men against one determined woman, especially 

 when the other woman is neutral? We went back. 



The sun was getting down into the west and I 

 had gone twice into the muck over my boot-tops 

 when I suddenly heard a soprano cry of triumph 

 off on my left. Leaping as rapidly as I could from 

 tussock to tussock (which is, by the way, the safest 

 method by which to negotiate them), I came out 



