100 
THE NIGHT-HERON. 
If the pine wood was gloomy, and the 
trees, with their dark foliage and unbroken 
shadow, struck a feeling of awe to the travel- 
ler's mind, the cedar swamp affects him more 
unpleasantly still. 
Imagine a row of tall straight trunks, sixty 
or a hundred feet high, and growing so close 
together that a man can hardly squeeze him- 
self between. There is not a single branch 
except at the top; and there the foliage mats 
itself so thickly as to shut out the day. 
The traveller, making his way through a 
cedar swamp, must use a compass as the 
mariner does at sea; and even then he cannot 
always see which way the needle is pointing. 
The ground beneath his feet is a soft bog. 
The ruins of former trees lie piled in con- 
fusion ; and the prostrate logs are covered 
with green moss ; and thick bushy laurels 
choke up every space, and still further impede 
his progress. At each step he takes he sinks 
up to his knees in the bog ; or must clamber 
over the fallen timber; or squeeze himself 
through the laurel bushes; or plunge up to his 
middle in ponds made by the uprooting of 
large trees, and which the green moss has 
