 had him think otherwise, Mark felt that he was waking
also, and a prey to the same reflections. This was almost worse than all, for if
he began to brood over their miseries instead of trying to make head against
them, there could be little doubt that such a state of mind would powerfully
assist the influence of the pestilent climate. Never had the light of day been
half so welcome to his eyes, as when awaking from a fitful doze, Mark saw it
shining through the blanket in the doorway.
    He stole out gently, for his companion was sleeping now; and having
refreshed himself by washing in the river, where it flowed before the door, took
a rough survey of the settlement. There were not above a score of cabins in the
whole; half of these appeared untenanted; all were rotten and decayed. The most
tottering, abject, and forlorn among them, was called, with great propriety, the
Bank, and National Credit Office. It had some feeble props about it, but was
settling deep down in the mud, past all recovery.
    Here and there, an effort had been made to clear the land, and something
like a field had been marked out, where, among the stumps and ashes of burnt
trees, a scanty crop of Indian corn was growing. In some quarters, a snake or
zigzag fence had been begun, but in no instance had it been completed; and the
fallen logs, half hidden in the soil, lay mouldering away. Three or four meagre
dogs, wasted and vexed with hunger; some long-legged pigs, wandering away into
the woods in search of food; some children, nearly naked, gazing at him from the
huts; were all the living things he saw. A fetid vapour, hot and sickening as
the breath of an oven, rose up from the earth, and hung on everything around;
and as his foot-prints sunk into the marshy ground, a black ooze started forth
to blot them out.
    Their own land was mere forest. The trees had grown so thick and close that
they shouldered one another out of their places, and the weakest, forced into
shapes of strange distortion, languished like cripples. The best were stunted,
from the pressure and the want of room; and high about the stems of all, grew
long rank grass, dank weeds, and frowsy underwood: not devisable into their
separate kinds, but tangled all together in a heap; a jungle deep and dark, with
neither earth nor water at its roots, but putrid matter, formed of the pulpy
offal of
