The very largest of the buildings fell in, and there was nothing visible but trees and hawthorns on the upper lands, and willows, flags, reeds, and rushes on the lower.
These crumbling ruins still more choked the stream, and almost, if not quite, turned it back.

If any water ooze past, it is not perceptible, and there is no channel through to the salt ocean.

It is a vast stagnant swamp, which no man dare enter, since death would be his inevitable fate.
There exhales from this oozy mass so fatal a vapour that no animal can endure it.

The black water bears a greenish-brown floating scum, which for ever bubbles up from the putrid mud of the bottom.

When the wind collects the miasma, and, as it were, presses it together, it becomes visible as a low cloud which hangs over the place.