As I coasted inshore, peering into the gloom among the hideous, skeleton roots of this amphibious forest, I passed, now and again, the mouths of little creeks or channels that appeared to penetrate the swamp. Presently I encountered an island of mangrove, separated from the main swamp by a comparatively broad channel, and reflecting that this creek must open again into the river lower down, I thought I might take this opportunity to examine the interior of a mangrove swamp. So I lowered the sail and mast, and putting the canoe into the channel, allowed her to drift along on the current, which I now noticed had grown quite sluggish, while I tied on my wig, in case I should unexpectedly meet any of the natives. Soon the channel grew much narrower, but as it was still open ahead, I let the canoe drift on while I looked about me and marvelled at the strangeness of the scene. The trees--if I may call them by that name--appeared to be mere confused tangles of branches, without trunks and standing upon high stilt-like roots that arched and twisted in the most astonishing manner. Moreover, fresh roots appeared, springing from the most unexpected places, some even from the very highest branches, and these dropped down as straight as a plumb-line with their round ends pointing at the water like attenuated fingers. Before I had drifted very far, the foliage closed completely over the creek, converting it into a dim and gloomy tunnel, and producing a most extraordinary illusion; for the stillness inside the swamp was so absolute that the surface of the water was invisible, the reflections of the trees being quite continuous with the trees themselves, and the one indistinguishable from the other. Overhead was a tangle of branches and leaves, and a similar tangle appeared at an equal distance underneath, while the strange, contorted roots merged above and below into the branches. Thus, as I drifted along, I appeared to be suspended in mid-air in the axis of a large tube of foliage, and the weird, fantastic effect was not lessened when I looked overboard and was confronted by a hideous, horned apparition peering up at me from below. Such animal life as there was, was in keeping with the ghostly unreality of the scene. Big, piebald kingfishers sat motionless and silent on the roots, with an inverted duplicate perching on the inverted roots below; and purple-bodied crabs crawled along the branches overhead, squinting horribly and seeming to grin with secret amusement at their incongruous position.