THe Buzzard of the Gear Swamp 
To most eyes, no doubt, the prospect would have 
seemed desolate, even forbidding. A single track of 
railroad lay under my feet, while down and away in 
front of me stretched the Bear Swamp, the largest, 
least-trod area of primeval swamp in southern New 
Jersey. 
To me it was neither desolate nor forbidding, be- 
cause I knew it well, — its gloomy depths, its silent 
streams, its hollow stumps, its trails, and its haunting 
mysteries. Yet I had never crossed its borders, I was 
born within its shadows, close enough to smell the 
magnolias of the margin, and had lived my first ten 
years only a little farther off ; but not till now, after 
twice ten years of absence, had I stood here ready 
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