surrounding level of the marsh.

Fiddlers swarmed away as Chita advanced over the moist soil, each
uplifting its single huge claw as it sidled off;--then frogs
began to leap before her as she reached the thicker grass;--and
long-legged brown insects sprang showering to right and left as
she parted the tufts of the thickening verdure. As she went on,
the bitter-weeds disappeared;--jointed grasses and sinewy dark
plants of a taller growth rose above her head: she was almost
deafened by the storm of insect shrilling, and the mosquitoes
became very wicked. All at once something long and black and
heavy wriggled almost from under her naked feet,--squirming so
horribly that for a minute or two she could not move for fright.
But it slunk away somewhere, and hid itself; the weeds it had
shaken ceased to tremble in its wake; and her courage returned.
She felt such an exquisite and fearful pleasure in the
gratification of that naughty curiosity! Then, quite
unexpectedly--oh! what a start it gave her!--the solitary white
object burst upon her view, leprous and ghastly as the yawn of a
cotton-mouth. Tombs ruin soon in Louisiana;--the one Chita
looked upon seemed ready to topple down. There was a great
ragged hole at one end, where wind and rain, and perhaps also the
burrowing of crawfish and of worms, had loosened the bricks, and
caused them to slide out of place. It seemed very black inside;
but Chita wanted to know what was there. She pushed her way
through a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through
some tall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;--then she crouched
down on hands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It
was not so black inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted
down through a chink in the roof; and she could see!