The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-31
sWAMPs

A swamp is the antithesis of desert, but most of us would prefer the horrors of the desert to the perils of those dis nal spots, where death in many forms lies ambushed, and where Nature herself invests the scene with a gloom that de- presses the strongest spirit. We know what we have to face on the desert. The whitening rays of sun that literally dries up the currents of life; the tor ment of thirst that becomes a fearsome thing when there is no drop of water left in the canteen, and the traveller, stumbling along with black and swollen tongue, sees in his agony pleasant water courses, lakes and green pastures, the mirage that has lured many an unfor- tunate to his death. These are the twin evils of the desert, and there are sand storms that add more to ones discomfort than to one's danger.
 But the desert, though it be lonely and desolate, lacking those kindly manifes- tations by which Mother Earth makes herself habitable to man and pleasant to gaze upon, is nevertheless openly hostile. There are no phantoms on the sand, save those created by a feverish brain. The sand may yield beneath our footsteps, but it does not swallow us up in an un- expected moment, as do the sullen black waters of swamp, or the deadly quick sands that suck down into their depths men and animals And giant trees. In the day we can see what we are about, and the nights are lit with the glory of moon and stars. When we grow weary we can sleep, alone with the night, the, stars and the sand. And if the heat is well-nigh intolerable in the day, there is relief in the cool hours of the night when the desert sands quickly throw off the warmth derived from the sun and chill succeeds the blaze of midday.
 There is little to redeem the swamp nothing that pleads for it in the minds of men, save, perhaps, it's riotous beauty. Even this inspires more fear than admi- ration. In the everlasting shadow that rests upon the silent pools, and rnouldy soil, magnifying every uncouth tree trunk into some vague monster, there is, we fancy, sinister threat that warns us to turn back, ere it is too late. Heavy festoons of moss shut off the forward view. Thick vines curl about the bodies of trees, as the serpents coil around the struggling Laoccoon; and the seTpents that the tendrils of these vines so much resemble may be close about, lying upon rotting logs, floating lazily on the stag nant waters, or hiding from sight in the undergFowth, to be aroused by the in- truder's foot. They are disgusting and terrifying, the ophidian dwellers in the swamps; fat moccasins that are the kings of the lesser reptiles, a deadly poison in their fangs. While the crocodile and the alligator are more powerful and likely to be more dangerous in battle royal, the moccasin is feared the most.
 These denizens of the swamp, how ever, constitute but small, though im- portant, part of it's life. Innumerable in- sects fill the air; countless small crea- lures move about or torpidly sleep their lives away. They inhabit the air, the earth and the noisome water. Worse of all is the fever that fastens upon hu- manity in the swamps, or steals out and into the uplands to strike it's victims down. Not many poets have been inspired by the funeral calm of a swamp, and for a good reason. An Ambrose Bierce could picture one of these. areas of disease, darkness and death, using for that pur- pose the phrases he affects in his maca- bre tales, but no lover of the sun, which is the source of life and beauty on the earth; no one who believes that the prov ince of water is to sing as it goes about it's daily tasks; no one who regards trees and other forms of vegetation as friendly things, put on earth to shelter and cheer all living creatures, can see much to. ad- mire in the miasmic catacombs of a swamp. Il