The forests between Lake Superior and the Mississippi, where the
country is very flat and wet, are composed almost entirely of black
cypress; they grow so thick that the tops get intermixed and
interlaced, and form almost a matting overhead, through which
the sun scarcely ever penetrates. The trees are covered with
unwholesome-looking mosses, which exhale a damp earthy smell, like a
cellar. The ground is so covered with a rank growth of elder and other
shrubs, many of them with thorns an inch long, and with fallen and
decayed trunks of trees, that it is impossible to take a step without
breaking one's shins. Not a bird or animal of any kind is to be seen,
and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now
and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock
going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre
colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the
vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far
from cheering; and I don't know any position so likely to give one the
horrors as being lost in one, or where one could so well realise what
a desolate loneliness is. The wasps, whose nests like great gourds
hang from the trees about the level of one's face; the mosquitoes in
millions; the little black flies, and venomous snakes, all add their
'little possible' to render a tramp through a cypress swamp
agreeable.--_Sullivan's Rambles_.