ched the trees. "But they didn't say anything about the cypress
being in an unholy swamp."

"Holy smoked fish, what a country!" muttered Higgins as he peered into
the dark recesses of the densely wooded swamp. "What a place to hide
out in if a fellow wanted to drop out of the world. Say, I guess this
is the same swamp our friend Davis went paddling into yesterday. Well,
she lies lower than your lake, notice that?"

"So it does. I thought I had the lowest land in the world, but this
swamp's got mine beat."

"A ditch in the swamp running into the river might drain your piece
some. Have to be some dig, but you could afford to do it on a
thousand-acre proposition. It's something to figure on."

Payne made no reply but led the way to the dugout and headed across the
water for the bunch of pines marking his northwestern corner.

"There isn't as much water on it as I thought," he said as the canoe
stuck again as they approached the pines.

"No; it's only the middle that's really drowned. Wonder what the
bottom's like."

Higgins thrust his paddle tentatively into the bottom. "Well, I'll be
damned!" The blade of the paddle had slipped easily into the ground.
Higgins pushed on the handle, pushed the paddle three feet into soil,
withdrew it and held it up for inspection. "Muck! Three foot of black
muck, and I wasn't near touching bottom!"

Together they began to probe, and everywhere with the same result. The
muck underneath the water ran from three to five feet in depth, and was
as black as peat.

The water grew shallower as they went westward and presently gave way
to dry land covered with a growth of saw grass through which they
literally had to push their way. The saw grass ended abruptly, and the
last hundred yards to the pines they walked on high and dry land. The
pines were on the eastern edge of the great prairie which they had
glimpsed on their walk up the river.

As they paddled back to the hammock for the breakfast which they had
left the Seminole to prepare Payne studied the land to the northward
with keen interest. A heavier growth than saw grass covered this land.
On closer inspection it proved to be a jungle of elderberry, the growth
so dense that a man could barely squeeze through. The land here was
higher and dry, and black muck of the same depth as on the drowned land
to the south. Payne paddled back to Deer Hammock in silence. Just as
they were about to land he drove his paddle int