pools of darkened water.  All over this expanse rise the trunks of gigantic cypresses, shorn of all their limbs, and left like great obelisks, scattered so thickly that the distance is lost in the forest of spires.  Some are whitened and some blackened by decay and fire; many rise to a hundred feet or more above the lake.  The branches are all gone, save in a few more gigantic forms, whose fantastic remnants of the old forest arches add to the illusion of monumental ruin which forces itself on the mind.  The singularity of the general effect is quite matched by the wonder of the detail.

“Taking the solitary dug-out canoe, or pirogue, as it is called in the vernacular, we paddled out into the tangle of water-paths.  The green carpet, studded with yellow and white, that we saw from the shores, resolved itself into a marvellously beautiful and varied vegetation.  From the tangle of curious forms the eye selects two noble flowers:  our familiar northern water-lily, grown to a royal form, its flowers ten inches broad, and its floating pads near a foot across; and another grander flower, the Wampapin lily, the queen of American flowers.  It is worth a long journey to see this shy denizen of our swamps in its full beauty.  From the midst of its great floating leaves, which are two feet or more in diameter, rise two large leaves borne upon stout foot-stalks that bring them a yard above the water; from between these elevated leaves rises to a still greater height the stem of the flower.  The corolla itself is a gold-colored cup a foot in diameter, lily-like in a general way, but with a large pestle-shaped ovary rising in the centre of the flower, in which are planted a number of large seeds, the ‘pins’ of Wampapin.  These huge golden cups are poised on their stems, and wave in the breeze above great wheel-like leaves, while the innumerable white lilies fill in the spaces between, and enrich the air with their perfume.

“Slowly we crept through the tangled paths until we were beyond the sight of shore, in the perfect silence of this vast ruined temple, on every side the endless obelisks of the decaying cypress, and as far as the eye could see were ranged the numberless nodding bells of the yellow lilies, and the still-eyed white stars below them.  While we waited in the coming evening, the silence was so deep, the whir of a bald eagle’s wings, as he swept through the air, was audible from afar.  The lonely creature sat on the peak of one of the wooden towers over our boat, and looked curiously down upon us.  The waters seemed full of fish, and, indeed, the lake has much celebrity as a place for such game.  We could see them creeping through the mazes of the water-forest, in a slow, blind way, not a bit like the dance of the northern creatures of the active waters of our mountain streams.