Cypress Swamps 97 
yield are not those of the Adirondack swamps, 
and it is precisely for this reason that I have 
ventured to include a picture of a region 
which, even to the casual view, offers so de- 
cided a contrast to other corners of our estate. 
My business kept me in the swamp during 
February and part of March and, while wait- 
ing now and then the arrival of rafts from up 
the river, there was much leisure to paddle in 
a lumberman’s dugout through the devious 
and interminable waterways of the swamps or 
to saunter in the pine woods which cover the 
high ground back from the river. 
At this season, the leafless trees standing 
like skeletons in the shallow waters and hold- 
ing their long bony arms aloft, present doubt- 
less a much more desolate picture than they 
do later in the year. The tall tapering col- 
umns of the white ash, the massive bulging 
trunk of the gum, and the cypress with its 
queer ‘‘knees”’ protruding from the water, 
extend along both banks in endless array. 
On these gaunt trees by the silent yellow river 
perch the vultures, as they perch on the Tow- 
ers of Silence on Malabar Hill—waiting. 
Black, muffled figures, crouching immovable, 
they seem to say that the world will be theirs 
in the end—they have only to wait. Yet 
vi 
