112 
THE GREAT HERON. 
Hampshire, was described to me as a great curiosity. Many 
of their breeding-places occur in both Carolinas, chiefly in 
the vicinity of the sea. In the lower 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 unmolested, they con- 
tinue 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 appearance they present to a stranger 
is singular — 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 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 con- 
fusion. 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 stubborn laurels, or 
