n the mud, nor even newts. It is dead.

The flags and reeds are coated with slime and noisome to the touch;
there is one place where even these do not grow, and where there is
nothing but an oily liquid, green and rank. It is plain there are no
fishes in the water, for herons do not go thither, nor the kingfishers,
not one of which approaches the spot. They say the sun is sometimes
hidden by the vapour when it is thickest, but I do not see how any can
tell this, since they could not enter the cloud, as to breathe it when
collected by the wind is immediately fatal. For all the rottenness of a
thousand years and of many hundred millions of human beings is there
festering under the stagnant water, which has sunk down into and
penetrated the earth, and floated up to the surface the contents of the
buried cloacae.

Many scores of men have, I fear, perished in the attempt to enter this
fearful place, carried on by their desire of gain. For it can scarcely
be disputed that untold treasures lie hidden therein, but guarded by
terrors greater than fiery serpents. These have usually made their
endeavours to enter in severe and continued frost, or in the height of a
drought. Frost diminishes the power of the vapour, and the marshes can
then, too, be partially traversed, for there is no channel for a boat.
But the moment anything be moved, whether it be a bush, or a willow,
even a flag, if the ice be broken, the pestilence rises yet stronger.
Besides which, there are portions which never freeze, and which may be
approached unawares, or a turn of the wind may drift the gas towards the
explorer.

In the midst of summer, after long heat, the vapour rises, and is in a
degree dissipated into the sky, and then by following devious ways an
entrance may be effected, but always at the cost of illness. If the
explorer be unable to quit the spot before night, whether in summer or
winter, his death is certain. In the earlier times some bold and
adventurous men did indeed succeed in getting a few jewels, but since
then the marsh has become more dangerous, and its pestilent character,
indeed, increases year by year, as the stagnant water penetrates deeper.
So that now for very many years no such attempts have been made.

The extent of these foul swamps is not known with certainty, but it is
generally believed that they are, at the widest, twenty miles across,
and that they reach in a winding line for nearly forty. But the outside
parts are mu