When we recovered our senses, we found ourselves in the bottom of the boat, and the old Yankee standing by us with a bottle of whisky in his hand, which he invited us to taste.  We felt better for the cordial, and began to look around us.

Before us lay an apparently interminable cypress swamp, behind us a sheet of water, formed by the junction of the two creeks, and at present overhung by a mass of smoke that concealed the horizon from our view.  From time to time there was a burst of flame that lit up the swamp, and caused the cypress-trees to appear as if they grew out of a sea of fire.

“Come,” said the old Yankee, “we must get on.  It is near sunset, and we have far to go.”

“And which way does our road lie?” I asked.

“Across the cypress swamp, unless you’d rather go round it.”

“The shortest road is the best,” said Carleton.

“The shortest road is the best!” repeated the Yankee contemptuously, and turning to his companions.  “Spoken like a Britisher.  Well, he shall have his own way, and the more so as I believe it to be as good a one as the other.  James,” added he, turning to one of the men, “you go further down, through the Snapping Turtle swamp; we will cross here.”

“And our horses?” said I.

“They are grazing in the rushes.  They’ll be took care of.  We shall have rain to-night, and to-morrow they may come round without singeing a hoof.”

I had found myself once or twice upon the borders of the swamp that now lay before us but had always considered it impenetrable, and I did not understand, as I gazed into its gloomy depths, how we could possibly cross it.

“Is there any beaten path or road through the swamp?” enquired I of the old man.

“Path or road!  Do you take it for a gentleman’s park?  There’s the path that natur’ has made.”  And he sprang upon the trunk of a tree covered with moss and creepers, which rose out of the vast depth of mud that formed the swamp.

“Here’s the path,” said he.

“Then we will wait and come round with our horses,” I replied.  “Where shall we find them?”

“As you please, stranger. We shall cross the swamp.  Only, if you can’t do like your horses, and sup off bulrushes, you are likely to fast for the next twenty-four hours.

“And why so?  There is game and wild-fowl for the shooting.”

“No doubt there is, if you can eat them raw, like the Injuns.  Where will you find, within two miles round, a square foot of dry land to make your fire on?”

To say the truth, we did not altogether like the company we had fallen amongst.  These Yankee squatters bore in general but an indifferent character.  They were said to fear neither God nor man, to trust entirely to their axe and their rifle, and to be little scrupulous in questions of property; in short, to be scarce less wild and dangerous than the Indians themselves.