The forest scenery here almost defies description. Immense cedars, and
other lordly trees, rear their gigantic and lightning-scathed heads over
their smaller and less hardy but graceful neighbours; cactuses,
mimonias, and tropical shrubs and flowers, which at home are to be seen
only in conservatories or green-houses are here in profusion,
"And plants, at whose name the verse feels loath,
Fill the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid hue,"
while innumerable forms of insect and reptile life, from the tiny yellow
scorpion to the murky alligator of eighteen feet in length, give a
forbidding aspect to the scene. Racoons, squirrels, wild turkeys,
pelicans, vultures, quails, doves, wild deer, opossums, chickmuncks,
white foxes, wild cats, wolves,--are ever and anon to be seen among the
high palmetto brakes, and the alligators in the bayous arid swamps,
"make night hideous" with their discordant bellowings and the vile odour
which they emit.
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