Here and there a green magnolia glistened in the sun, with its broad white flowers, each of them as large as a dining-plate.
Underneath grew the thick cane (_arundo gigantea_), its tall pale-green reeds standing parallel to each other, and ending in lance-shaped blades, like stalks of giant wheat before its ears have shot.

Over this again rose the grey limbs of the tupeloo-tree (_nyssa aquatica_), with light leaves and thin foliage.

The beautiful palmetto (_chamaerops_) lifted its fan-like branches, as if to screen the earth from the hot sun that poured down upon it, and here and there its singular shapes were shadowed in the water.

From tree to tree huge parasites stretched like cables--vines, and lianas, and various species of convolvulus.

Some of these were covered with thick foliage, while others exhibited a surface of splendid flowers.