GREAT HERON. 
51 
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 unmo- 
lested, they continue annually to breed for many years. These 
swamps are from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and some- 
times 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 sin- 
gular. 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 be- 
low. 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. 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. 
