The land was low,
so low that it seemed but a little higher than the water level, but it
bore an amazingly abundant growth. The river seemed to flow through a
channel cut in the dense, solid vegetation. Great cypress trees
towered up from the water, enormously thick at the roots and rapidly
dwindling above. Between their rough trunks cypress scrub, sturdy
cabbage palms, mangrove, custard apple and other varieties of tropical
trees found space to grow; and between the trunks of the smaller trees
was a tangle of palmetto, saw grass, jungle vine, Virginia creeper and
the beautiful moon vine and its dainty flowers. Blue, yellow and red
flowers peeped from the tangle. Air plants bearing in their hearts
scarlet orchids clung to the trunks of hoary live oak, and the Spanish
moss, fragile, listless, drooping, hung like delicate drapery over all.
The stream grew narrower and the turtles upon the shore became visible.
A water turkey, though the boat was past, fell clumsily off its perch
into the water and after frantic efforts flopped away. Alligators lay
here and there along the banks; and a wild hog plowed about in the
matted water-hyacinths, unconcernedly seeking food, not alarmed by the
alligators or the boat or by the fierce brown Mexican buzzards--the
killing variety--which contemplated him from the dead cypress branches
above.
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