I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers, The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive has his conceal’d hut;) O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake, The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn, slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful ears each well-sheath’d in its husk; O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;