2-982-458 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Transatlantic Sketches - a Swamp in Louisiana - from a drawing by Mrs. Bodichon, 1858. 'The majestic rivers...overflow their banks every year, and, breaking over the artificial levees that are raised to restrain them within their natural channels, lodge their waters in the low grounds and hollows of the forests. There being no fall by which they can return again to the parent stream, the waters simmer in the hot sun, or fester in the thick, oppressive shadow of the trees, where nothing flourishes but the land-turtle, the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the moccasin - the latter a small but very venomous reptile. An area of no less than 9000 square miles between the Mississippi and Red Rivers is annually submerged...The traveller...may admire the luxuriant forest-growth, festooned with the graceful ribbons of the wild vine, the funereal streamers of the tillandsia, or Spanish moss (sure sign of a district subject to yellow fever), drooping from the branches of pine, cottonwood, cypress, and evergreen oaks - weirdlike all, as witches weeping in the moonlight...and underneath, amid the long thick grass, the palm and palmetto spreading their fanlike leaves in beautiful profusion'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.