“But it’s entirely different from a real swamp, you see,” remarked Josh; “I’ve been in a big one and I know.”
“How about that, Josh; wouldn’t you call a bog a swamp, too?” asked George.
“Not much I wouldn’t,” was the reply. “A swamp is always where there are dense trees, hanging vines and water. It’s a terribly gloomy place even in the middle of the day, and you’re apt to run across snakes, and all sorts of things like that.”
“Well, we haven’t seen a single snake so far,” admitted Horace. “I’m glad, too, because I never did like the things. This isn’t so very gloomy, when you come to look around you, but I’d call it just desolate, and let it go at that.”
“Black mud everywhere, though it’s nearly always covered with a deceptive green scum,” remarked Josh, “with here and there puddles of water where the frogs live and squawk the live-long day.”
“I wonder how deep that mud is anyhow?” speculated George.
“Suppose you get a pole and try while we’re resting here,” suggested Josh, with a wink at the scout next to him.
George thereupon looked around, and seeing a pole which Mr. Henderson may have placed there at some previous time he started to push it into the bog.
“What d’ye think of that, fellows?” he exclaimed, in dismay when he had rammed the seven foot pole down until three fourths of its length had vanished in the unfathomable depths of soft muck.
“Why, seems as if there wasn’t any bottom at all to the thing,” said Felix.