DISTRIBUTION OP RAINFALL. 265 



Mountains, we encounter new lines of forest-trees. One of tb^ first 

 is traced by the bald cypress, which seems to be surrounded by 

 natural boundaries. These are protuberances formed upon the roots 

 of this conifera, and they often rise to a mfetre in height : which 

 barriers defend the trunk against the attacks of large animals. 

 These cypresses compose gigantic thickets, which cover the swamps 

 of the lower Mississippi, of the Arkansas, of the Red River, and of 

 Florida, and extend as far as the mouth of the Ohio. It was under 

 the vast shade of one of these trees that Cortez and all his army 

 found a refuge in Mexico. Their wide stems, of conical form, are 

 crowned with a multitude of horizontal branches, which are entangled 

 with each other, and confounded with those of the neighbouring 

 cypresses. These vaults of foliage, which are frequently superimposed, 

 give to the forests of this cypress an aspect quite peculiar. The short 

 leaves of a sombre green, represent on drawing near a kind of crape, 

 which impresses on these shades a funereal appearance. And under 

 these gloomy domes, which are here and there enlightened by a few 

 openings made by the winds, or due to the age of the branches, all 

 the scourges of man, whether animate, or inanimate, seem to have 

 given each other the rendezvous. Death soars over these shady 

 solitudes, which incessantly evoke the idea of it. Fevers, aUigators, 

 serpents, mosquitoes contend with each other for the woodman 

 who goes with his axe to strike their trunks — the growth of ages. 

 But no danger arrests the avidity of man, nothing terrifies the enter- 

 prising descendant of the Anglo-Saxon race. The lumberers venture 

 through these pestilential swamps, and precipitate into the waters of 

 the Mississippi the trunks they have uprooted. 



" The Mississippi, that ancient father of waters, is indeed the great 

 agent of destruction to these forests of North America ; its waters, 

 especially at the period of inundation, are continually charged with 

 enormous masses of wood, with gigantic rafts which encumber its 

 bed, and are self-constructed with more solidity than any raft made 

 by the hand of man. These trains of trees are especially remarkable 

 upon the Atachafalaya, one of the arms of the Mississippi. They are 

 equally met with upon the Red River. One of the affluents of this 

 river, the Nashita, is interrupted for a space of seventeen leagues by 

 an almost uninterrupted succession of these rafts. M. de Humboldt 

 has made known the same fact in the Orinoco, whose bed is unceas- 

 ingly encumbered by a mass of trunks, which seem as if driven into 

 the mud. 



"These swampy forests, by the destructive action of humidHy, 



2f 



