GREAT HERON 



29 



and sometimes five or six in lengthy 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 singu- 

 lar. 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 color 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 under- 

 growth of laurel, fifteen or twenty feet high, intersects every open- 

 ing 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 be- 

 tween the stubborn laurels, or plunge to the middle in ponds made 

 by the uprooting of large trees, and which the green moss con- 

 cealed 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. When 

 a breeze rises, at first it sighs mournfully through the tops ; but as 

 the gale increases, the tall mast-like cedars wave like fishing poles, 

 and rubbing against each other, produce a variety of singular 

 noises, that, with the help of a little imagination, resemble shrieks, 

 groans, growling of bears, wolves and such like comfortable music. 



On the tops of the tallest of these cedars the Herons construct 

 their nests, ten or fifteen pair sometimes occupying a particular 

 part of the swamp. The nests are large, formed of sticks, and 

 lined with smaller twigs, each occupies the top of a single tree. 



VOL. VIII. H 



