They now approached the eastern end, where rose the circular mountain of which mention has been already made.

This eminence had evidently at one time been detached from the rest of the land, to which it was now joined by a neck of swamp about a mile and a half in breadth, and two miles in length.
Hazel proposed to reconnoiter this part of the shore nearly, and ran the boat close in to land.

The reeds or canes with which this bog was densely clothed grew in a dark, spongy soil.

Here and there this waste was dotted with ragged trees which he recognized as the cypress.

From its gaunt branches hung a black, funeral kind of weeper, a kind of moss resembling iron-gray horse-hair both in texture and uses, though not so long in the staple.
This parasite, Hazel explained to Helen, was very common in such marshy ground, and was the death-flag hung out by Nature to warn man that malaria and fever were the invisible and inalienable inhabitants of that fatal neighborhood.
Looking narrowly along the low shore for some good landing, where under shelter of a tree they might repose for an hour, and spread their midday repast, they discovered an opening in the reeds, a kind of lagoon or bayou, extending into the morass between the highlands of the island and the circular mountain, but close under the base of the latter.