which border the dyke, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks
are rather circumscribed, inasmuch as the dykes are the only promenades.
On all sides of these lie either the marshy rice-fields, the brimming
river, or the swampy patches of yet unreclaimed forest, where the huge
cypress trees and exquisite evergreen undergrowth spring up from a
stagnant sweltering pool, that effectually forbids the foot of the
explorer.

As I skirted one of these thickets to-day, I stood still to admire the
beauty of the shrubbery. Every shade of green, every variety of form,
every degree of varnish, and all in full leaf and beauty in the very depth
of winter. The stunted dark-coloured oak; the magnolia bay (like our own
culinary and fragrant bay), which grows to a very great size; the wild
myrtle, a beautiful and profuse shrub, rising to a height of six, eight,
and ten feet, and branching on all sides in luxuriant tufted fullness;
most beautiful of all, that pride of the South, the magnolia grandiflora,
whose lustrous dark green perfect foliage would alone render it an object
of admiration, without the queenly blossom whose colour, size, and perfume
are unrivalled in the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent
creature grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps, but seldom
adorns a high or dry soil, or suffers itself to be successfully
transplanted. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable
covert, and from glittering graceful branch to branch hang garlands of
evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing
even now; while I, bethinking me of the pinching cold that is at this hour
tyrannising over your region, look round on this strange scene--on these
green woods, this unfettered river, and sunny sky--and feel very much like
one in another planet from yourself.

The profusion of birds here is one thing that strikes me as curious,