ALEXANDER WILSON. 
liii 
crossed it, are immense, solitary pine savannas, through 
which the road winds among stagnant ponds, swarming 
with alligators, dark, sluggish creeks, of the colour of 
brandy, over which are thrown high wooden bridges, 
without railings, and so crazy and rotten, as not only to 
alarm one’s horse, but also the rider, and to make it a 
matter of thanksgiving with both, when they get fairly 
over, without going through ; enormous cypress swamps, 
w r hich, to a stranger, have a striking, desolate, and ruinous 
appearance. Picture to yourself a forest of prodigious 
trees, rising, as thick as they can grow, from a vast, flat, 
and impenetrable morass, covered for ten feet from the 
ground with reeds. The leafless limbs of the cypresses 
are clothed with an extraordinary kind of moss, ( Tillandsia 
Usneoidesy) from two to ten feet long, in such quantities, 
that fifty men might conceal themselves in one tree. 
Nothing in this country struck me with such surprise as 
the prospect of several thousand acres of such timber, 
loaded, as it were, with many million tons of tow, waving 
in the wind. I attempted to penetrate several of these 
swamps with my gun, in search of something new; but, 
except in some chance places, I found it altogether imprac- 
ticable. I coasted along their borders, however, in many 
places, and was surprised at the great profusion of ever- 
greens, of numberless sorts, and a variety of berries that 
I knew nothing of. Here I found multitudes of birds, 
that never winter with us in Pennsylvania, living in 
abundance.” 
“ From Wilmington I rode through solitary pine 
savannas and cypress swamps as before, sometimes thirty 
miles without seeing a hut or human being. On arriving 
at the Wackamaw, Pedee, and Black River, I made long 
zigzags among the rich nabobs, who live on their rice 
plantations, amidst large villages of negro huts. One of 
these gentlemen told me, that he had ‘ something better 
than six hundred head of blacks ! ’ ” 
