58 
GREAT HERON. 
tildes of the tallest cedar swamps, where, if unmolested, 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 ap- 
pearance they present to a stranger is singular. A front of tall 
and perfectly strait 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 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 com- 
pletely, as to render a passage through laborious and harrassing 
beyond description; at every step you either sink to the knees, 
clamber over fallen timber, squeeze yourself through between 
the stubborn laurels, or plunge to the middle in ponds made by 
the uprooting of large trees, and which the green moss conceal- 
ed 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 imagi- 
nation, 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 
