A 'Thousand-Mile Walk 
stumps fall off and disappear as they become 
old, and the trunk becomes smooth as if turned 
in a lathe. 
After some hours in this charming forest I 
started on the return journey before night, 
on account of the difficulties of the swamp and 
the brier patch. On leaving the palmettos and 
entering the vine-tangled, half-submerged for- 
est I sought long and carefully, but in vain, for 
the trail, for I had drifted about too incau- 
tiously in search of plants. But, recollecting 
the direction that I had followed in the morn- 
ing, I took a compass bearing and started to 
penetrate the swamp in a direct line. 
Of course I had a sore weary time, pushing 
through the tanglement of falling, standing, and 
half-fallen trees and bushes, to say nothing of 
knotted vines as remarkable for their efficient 
army of interlocking and lancing prickers as for 
their length and the number of their blossoms. 
But these were not my greatest obstacles, nor 
yet the pools and lagoons full of dead leaves 
and alligators. It was the army of cat-briers 
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