There is no fraternal interlacing of branches to form a kindly, umbrageous shadow.

Between them is no genial undergrowth of vines, shrubs, and demi-trees, generous in fruits, berries and nuts, such as make one of the charms of Northern forests.

On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green, fragrant with the elusive sweetness of white clover, and dainty flowers, but a sparse, wiry, famished grass, scattered thinly over the surface in tufts and patches, like the hair on a mangy cur.
The giant pines seem to have sucked up into their immense boles all the nutriment in the earth, and starved out every minor growth.

So wide and clean is the space between them, that one can look through the forest in any direction for miles, with almost as little interference with the view as on a prairie.

In the swampier parts the trees are lower, and their limbs are hung with heavy festoons of the gloomy Spanish moss, or "death moss," as it is more frequently called, because where it grows rankest the malaria is the deadliest.