Cedar swamp

“ Half a mile from the shanty Peter shot a swamp hare that was nibbling a spruce trunk, and a little way farther he secured another. These carcasses he tied together with a deerskin thong as before, and trailed them in the wake of his snowshoes. This time he intended to make a longer circuit than on the preceding night.
He dragged this bait across a hardwood ridge and down into a great cedar swamp on the other side. In hard weather all the wild life of the woods resorts to such places for shelter, and here the wolves would be hunting if there was a pack in the neighborhood. ”

“ That cedar swamp ought to be full of them.'
'I wonder can they be preserved in any way,' said Robert, crushing in his lips the pleasant bitter-sweet berry. 'Linda is a wonderful hand at preserves, and when she comes'—
The thought seemed to energize him to the needful preparation for that coming: he immediately made a chop at a middle-aged Weymouth pine alongside, and began to cut it down. [177]
'Well, as to preserving the cranberries,' said Mr. Holt, laughing in his slight silent way, 'there's none required; they stay as fresh as when plucked for a long time. ”

“ The tree in Canada called the cedar is low, twisted, and knotted, with straggling roots growing in moist ground. It makes a thicket which the wind cannot pass through. Indians often cut a way into a cedar swamp in winter to build their wigwams in it. ”

“ The chief drawback—though not a serious one—to life in the swamp is the drinking water. It is of course rather warm in summer, and always full of fine particles of peat, just as in northern cedar-swamps, but nevertheless it is not unwholesome. ”

“ One might search in vain for a better place of rendezvous, surrounded on the outside by a swamp which it was almost impossible for a footman to pass, much less a horseman. There was, within, a cordon of thickly interwoven bushes and stunted trees; then another ring of swamp, and, finally, in the center, a spot of solid ground, some fifteen acres in extent, studded here and there with tall trees. One track there was, winding and intricate, along which the Americans found their way under the careful guidanceship of John Vale. ”

“ You all know that the mosquitoes in cedar swamp are an oreful hungry breed, and when they git a passenger they present him with numerous 'relief bills;' well I had gained considerable popularity in that swamp, by presentin' their condition before the legislatur' and askin' for reliet for the distressed inhabitants,—the Jedge, to head me down thar, passed all last night on a limb of one of the trees makin' stump speeches to the varmints, and you can see by his countenance that expectin' to be elected he has accepted all their mosquito bills! ”

“ In such places where they are left to grow up, they grow as tall and as thick as the tallest fir-trees; they preserve their green leaves both in winter and summer; the tall ones have no branches on the lower part of the stem.
The marshes where these trees grow are called Cedar Swamps. These cedar swamps [175] are numerous in New Jersey, and likewise in some parts of Pensylvania and New York. The most northerly place, where it has been hitherto found, is near Goshen in New York, under forty-one degrees and twenty-live minutes of north latitude, as I am informed by Dr. Colden. ”

“ He would have abandoned the ice-boat but for unwillingness to risk the fruit of their day's journey. They must be near the swamp and the creek now; it was scarcely possible they could have passed without recognising the cove whence they had issued in the morning; and yet there was a chance. For the weather was extremely thick, and daylight was fading quickly: the disguise of drifts is bewildering, even to the most practised eye.
'Ha! there are our cedars at last!' exclaimed Arthur. 'How the snow has buried them; they look stunted. ”

“ This swamp then, was in the midst of a pine wood, and was surrounded on two sides by little hills, some of which were covered with cedar, and others with the silver fir, very picturesque, and finely varied with shrubs, and every gradation of green. ”

“ By this means many cedar swamps are already quite destitute of cedars, having only young shoots left; and I plainly observed, by counting the circles round the stem, that they do not grow up very quickly, but require a great deal of time before they can be cut for timber. It is well known that a tree gets only one circle every year; a stem, eighteen inches in diameter, had one hundred and eight circles round the thicker end ”

“ Manantac, "Spruce swamp," and of Del. Menántac, "Spruce, cedar or pine swamp." (Zeisb.) The Abn. word Mannandakôô, "cedar" (Mass. -uᶋtugh; Nar. áwtuck) , seems to establish conclusively that -ántak was the general generic suffix for all kinds of coniferous trees, and with the prefix Men, Man, Me, etc., described small or dwarf coniferous trees usually found growing in swamps, and from which swamps took the name. [FN] There is nothing in the name or in its corruptions that means "point," "high lands," "place of observation," "fort," "fence," or "confluence" ”

“ Just saying Miss Fanny has done more for him than if I'd sent him six bushels of potatoes."...
We have yet to take our readers to one more scene before we finish the review of those who were going to the camp-meeting. The reader must follow us far beyond the abodes of man, into the recesses of that wild desolation known as the "Dismal Swamp." We pass over vast tracts where the forest seems growing out of the water. Cypress, red cedar, sweet gum, tulip, poplar, beech, and holly, form a goodly fellowship, waving their rustling boughs above. ”

“ These were old stumps of trees, which bore marks of an axe, though now decayed and mossed over. The next day, however, was cold and wet, and we felt wretched enough as we forced our way for hours through a beaver swamp, where the bracken grew higher than our heads, and tangled willows of great size required cutting away at every step. Slimy, stagnant pools, treacherous and deep, continually forced us to turn aside. At last a stream, whose banks were densely clothed with underwood, barred the path, and we could not find a practicable ford. ”

“ Little obstructs your passage, now that the firm ice is underfoot, unless it is the too close set tree trunks. Goldthread and partridge berry creep in the moss that mounds about the very stumps of the cedars, but no other vine or shrub seems to have the vitality to grow here, or if it had it has wisely used it to flee to more sunny uplands. Not even in tropical jungles have I seen the struggle for existence so fierce as it is among these too closely set swamp cedars. One in ten eventually survives and makes a marketable growth. ”

“ The silence is only broken by the loud breathing of the little steamer;—odors of vegetable death—smells of drowned grasses and decomposing trunks and of eternal mould-formation—make the air weighty to breathe; and the green obscurities on either hand deepen behind the crests of the water-oaks and the bright masses of willow frondescense. The parasitic life of the swamp, pendant and enormous, gives the scene a drenched, half-drowned look, as of a land long-immersed, and pushed up again from profundities of stagnant water,—and still dripping with moisture and monstrous algae. ”

“ The idea of a swamp had always presented itself to our mind’s eye as a vast expanse of shiny, slushy soil, half mud, half water, with here and there a rank undergrowth of bushes and stiff grass, and briers, through which it must be a melancholy task to travel,—but it is not so. In travelling through these swampy regions the prospect is neither a dull nor an uninteresting one; whole forests of grand old trees rise up from the watery waste, the rich varied foliage growing so{47} luxuriantly, and in such impenetrable masses that scarce a ray of sunshine comes glinting through. ”

“ The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire. ”

“ FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we have suddenly had dropped upon us a balmy, warm, summer day,—thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors growing so fast, that you may see and hear it grow.
The swampy belt of land in front of the house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest 138 to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wild-rose-bushes there are covered with buds; and the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid little feathers of verdure. This swamp is one of those crooks in our lot which occasions a never-ceasing conflict of spirit. ”

“ Dismal by nature, indeed, as well as by name, is that vast swamp, of which we now skirted the northern edge, looking into its endless pools of black water, where the melancholy cypress and juniper-trees alone overshadowed the thick-looking surface, their roots all globular, like huge bulbous plants, and their dark branches woven together with a hideous matting of giant creepers, which clung round their stems, and hung about the dreary forest like a drapery of withered snakes. ”

“ Through this thick barrier the river-water must pass, so that it is invariably well filtered before it can reach the interior of the forest-covered area, within which, vegetable matter is continually accumulating from the decay of trees and semi-aquatic plants. In proof of this, I may observe, that whenever any part of a swamp is dried up, during an unusually hot season, and the wood set on fire, pits are burnt into the ground many feet deep, or as far down as the fire can descend without meeting with water, and it is then found that scarcely any residuum or earthy matter is left. ”

“ At the bottom of all these 'cypress swamps' a bed of clay is found, with roots of the tall cypress, just as the underclays of the coal are filled with stigmaria." [69] In this way a thick accumulation of vegetable matter goes on forming for years, until either the river changes its course, and inundating the swamp gradually covers it over with sand and mud, or until, owing to oscillations of the earth's crust, the district is either permanently submerged, so as to be silted over, or elevated to nourish a new and different kind of vegetation. ”

“ There was at times no well-defined channel, and often we could hear the gurgling waters hurrying beneath our feet, yet catch no glimpse of them.
Here, too, other springs welled to the surface, and the augmented volume of waters finally left the swamp a stream of considerable size, which, after a tortuous course through many fields, entered a deep and narrow ravine. After untold centuries the brook has worn away the surface soil over which it originally flowed, then the gravel beneath, and so down to the clay, thirty feet below. ”

“ Their footing is as precarious as its own. Of course, now, the ice has set all things in its firm grip, but in summer there is little enough to hold up the swamp cedars and it is only by entwining their roots and growing them firmly together in a mat that they are able to keep their sprightly uprightness. ”

“ The explanation is not difficult; streams flow constantly, or rather ooze into the Great Dismal Swamp from the land that lies to the west, but instead of bringing mud in with them as rivers bring to the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. ”

“ Some of our Norfolk County swamps are so thickly set with swamp white cedars that it is almost impossible for a man to push his way through their young growth. That north wind that can cut its way to the heart of these must be keen indeed, and here, when the berries are plentiful, you may find not only robins, but now and then a bluebird, and{114} more frequently partridge woodpeckers, all winter long. ”

“ The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, and having heard that these pleasant saurians swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was induced to accompany him. There is something most uncanny in these tracts of swamp at nightfall. The twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming, evil-smelling pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense of unreality, especially on a moonlight night. It is like a Gustave Dore drawing of a bewitched forest. ”

“ There is a roaring, impetuous brook emptying into Second Fork, called “Rock Run.” It heads in a level swamp, near the summit of the mountain. The swamp contains about forty acres, and is simply a level bed of loose stones, completely overgrown with bright green moss.
“Rock Run” heads in a strong, ice-cold spring, but is soon sunken and lost among the loose stones of the swamp. Just where the immense hemlocks, that make the swamp a sunless gloom, get their foothold, is one of the things I shall never find out. But, all the same, they are there. ”

“ I felt as though forbidden to enter the mysteries of the swamp, as though warned that 3 danger lay within those aisles of twilight. The veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the stillness of the gloom, and a hush of expectation held every leaf motionless. The branches closed behind me and I stole on between lofty trees with mossy trunks, over fallen logs, and through the dripping jungle of ferns. Upland woods are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than swamp growth, but they have not the effect of tropical luxuriance which the swamp forest possesses. ”