THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 215 
a profusion of food in all the deep, dark, and gloomy swamps dispersed 
throughout them. 
I wish, kind reader, it were in my power to present to your mind’s eye 
the favourite resort of the Ivory -billed Woodpecker. Would that I could 
describe the extent of those deep morasses, overshadowed by millions of 
gigantic dark cypresses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if 
to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties 
which he must encounter, should he persist in venturing farther into their 
almost inaccessible recesses, extending for miles before him, where he should 
be interrupted by huge projecting branches, here and there the massy trunk 
of a fallen and decaying tree, and thousands of creeping and twining plants 
of numberless species ! Would that I could represent to you the dangerous 
nature of the ground, its oozing, spongy, and miry disposition, although 
covered with a beautiful but treacherous carpeting, composed of the richest 
mosses, flags, and water-lilies, no sooner receiving the pressure of the foot 
than it yields and endangers the very life of the adventurer, whilst here and 
there, as he approaches an opening, that proves merely a lake of black 
muddy water, his ear is assailed by the dismal croaking of innumerable 
frogs, the hissing of serpents, or the bellowing of alligators ! Would that I 
could give you an idea of the sultry pestiferous atmosphere that nearly 
suffocates the intruder during the meridian heat of our dogdays, in those 
gloomy and horrible swamps ! But the attempt to picture these scenes 
would be vain. Nothing short of ocular demonstration can impress any 
adequate idea of them. 
How often, kind reader, have I thought of the difference of the tasks 
imposed on different minds, when, travelling in countries far distant from 
those where birds of this species and others as difficult to be procured are 
now and then offered for sale in the form of dried skins, I have heard the 
amateur or closet-naturalist express his astonishment that half-a-crown was 
asked by the person who had perhaps followed the bird when alive over 
miles of such swamps, and after procuring it, had prepared its skin in the 
best manner, and carried it to a market thousands of miles distant from the 
spot where he had obtained it. I must say, that it has at least grieved me 
as much as when I have heard some idle fop complain of the poverty of the 
Gallery of the Louvre, where he had paid nothing, or when I have listened 
to the same infatuated idler lamenting the loss of his shilling, as he sauntered 
through the Exhibition Rooms of the Royal Academy of London, or any 
equally valuable repository of art. But, let us return to the biography of 
the famed Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 
The flight of this bird is graceful in the extreme, although seldom pro- 
longed to more than a few hundred yards at a time, unless when it has to 
