teamer glides again into canal or
bayou,--from bayou or canal once more into lake or bay; and sometimes
the swamp-forest visibly thins away from these shores into wastes of
reedy morass where, even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil trembles
to a sound like thunder of breakers on a coast: the storm-roar of
billions of reptile voices chanting in cadence,--rhythmically surging
in stupendous crescendo and diminuendo,--a monstrous and appalling
chorus of frogs! ....

Panting, screaming, scraping her bottom over the sand-bars,--all day
the little steamer strives to reach the grand blaze of blue open water
below the marsh-lands; and perhaps she may be fortunate enough to enter
the Gulf about the time of sunset. For the sake of passengers, she
travels by day only; but there are other vessels which make the journey
also by night--threading the bayou-labyrinths winter and summer:
sometimes steering by the North Star,--sometimes feeling the way with
poles in the white season of fogs,--sometimes, again, steering by that
Star of Evening which in our sky glows like another moon, and drops
over the silent lakes as she passes a quivering trail of silver fire.

Shadows lengthen; and at last the woods dwindle away behind you into
thin bluish lines;--land and water alike take more luminous
color;--bayous open into broad passes;--lakes link themselves with
sea-bays;--and the ocean-wind bursts upon you,--keen, cool, and full of
light. For the first time the vessel begins to swing,--rocking to the
great living pulse of the tides. And gazing from the deck around you,
with no forest walls to break the view, it will seem to you that the
low land must have once been rent asunder by the sea, and strewn about
the Gulf in fantastic tatters....

Sometimes above a waste of wind-blown prairie-cane you see an oasis
emerging,--a ridge or hillock heavily umbraged with the rounded foliage
of evergreen oaks:--a cheniere. And from the shining flood also
kindred green knolls arise,--pretty islets, each with its beach-girdle
of dazzling sand and shells, yellow-white,--and all radiant with
semi-tropical foliage, myrtle and palmetto, orange and magnolia. Under
their emerald shadows curious little villages of palmetto huts are
drowsing, where dwell a swarthy population of Orientals,--Malay
fishermen, who speak the Spanish-Creole of the Philippines as well as
their own Tagal, and perpetuate in Louisiana the Catholic traditions of
the Indies. There a