Aesthetics in the swamps

Next began the muskegs, which almost entirely stood under water; these we h ad to cross for miles; think with what misery, every step up to our knees.. .. The whole of this land of the Lapps was mostly muskeg, here called stygx . A priest could never so describe hell, because it is no more horrible. Ne ver have poets been able to picture the Styx so foul, since that is no foul er.-CAROLUS LINNAEUS (1732) [1, vol, 1, pp. 141-42]. When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and mos t interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of Nature.-HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1862) [2, p. 228].