446 GREA T HER ON. 



tides. On the higher inland parts of the country, heyond the 

 mountains, they are less numerous ; and one which was shot 

 in the upper parts of New Hampshire was described to me 

 as a great curiosity. Many of their breeding places occur in 

 both Carolinas, chiefly in the vicinity of the sea. In the lower 

 parts of New Jersey, they have also their favourite places for 

 building and rearing their young. These are generally in the 

 gloomy solitudes of the tallest cedar swamps, where, if un- 

 molested, they continue annually to breed for many years. 

 These swamps are from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and 

 sometimes five or six in length, and appear as if they occupied 

 the former channel of some choked- up river, stream, lake, or 

 arm of the sea. The appearance they present to a stranger is 

 singular. 



A front of tall and perfectly straight trunks, rising to the 

 height of fifty or sixty feet without a limb, and crowded in 

 every direction, their tops so closely woven together as to 

 shut out the day, spreading the gloom of a perpetual twilight 

 below. On a nearer approach, they are found to rise out of 

 the water, which, from the impregnation of the fallen leaves 

 and roots of the cedars, is of the colour of brandy. Amidst 

 this bottom of congregated springs, the ruins of the former 

 forest lie piled in every state of confusion. The roots, prostrate 

 logs, and, in many places, the water, are covered with green 

 mantling moss, while an undergrowth of laurel fifteen or 

 twenty feet high intersects every opening so completely as 

 to render a passage through laborious and harassing beyond 

 description ; at every step you either sink to the knees, clamber 

 over fallen timber, squeeze yourself through between the stub- 

 born laurels, or plunge to the middle in ponds made by the 

 uprooting of large trees, which the green moss concealed from 

 observation. In calm weather, the silence of death reigns in 

 these dreary regions ; a few interrupted rays of light shoot 

 across the gloom ; and unless for the occasional hollow screams 

 of the herons, and the melancholy chirping of one or two 

 species of small birds, all is silence, solitude, and desolation. 



