Dismal Swamp

“ The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is the very eye of material anguish. Its circle of silvery beach is flooded and hidden, and still the pent-up water, vainly beseeching an outlet, is raised and driven in unnatural emnity to the roots of the tall juniper, cypress, and gum trees, that completely surround its shore. The waves that should murmur and break on a strand of incomparable brilliancy, are pushed beyond their proper limits, and compelled to soften and sap the productive earth; to wash bare and white the sinews of the friendly trees, and inundate a wide region of extraordinary fertility. ”

“ Little Dismal Swamp is wholly within North Carolina, in the peninsula between Albemarle Sound and Pimlico Sound, and while occupying considerably less than one-third as much area as Great Dismal, is probably better known to readers because of the tragedies which have been enacted within its dark and gloomy districts. Speaking generally, the swamps are composed of a spongy, vegetable soil, but without any mixture of earth, which supports a dense growth of aquatic plants, brush-wood and timber. ”

“ That cannot be so. It is universally known that the Dismal Swamp is the healthiest place in the known world. Where can you find a location in which a death has not occurred in a hundred years? It cannot be named. ”

“ Then we struck the valley of 'Ebumesu, winding water,' whose approach, rank with mire and corded with roots, is the Great Dismal Swamp of Dahome in miniature. Here, seven and a quarter miles from the mouth, the stream measures about twenty yards broad, the thalweg is deep and navigable, and the water, bitumen-coloured with vegetable matter, tastes brackish. There is the usual wasteful profusion of growth. Ferns ramp upon the trees; Cameron counted at Akankon two dozen different species within a few hundred yards. Orchids bunch the boughs and boles of dead forest-giants ”

“ Some queer little cabins are built along these water-ways, a few being occupied by timber cutters, but generally they are the temporary abodes of hunters who find shooting and trapping both pleasurable and profitable, and who work at logging out of game season. Little Dismal Swamp, though smaller than its more northern neighbor, is very much more dense with brush-wood, and decidedly more forbidding, because its gloomy depths rarely echo with the voice of man, or the sound of the woodman’s ax. ”

“ That the Lake of the Dismal Swamp is to become the great centre of attraction there can be no reasonable doubt. Recent demonstrations in that direction go to prove beyond cavil the fact. The visit of John Boyle O'Reilly, editor of the Boston Herald, Mr. Mosely, of Washington, and several other distinguished persons, go to prove the fact. Contiguous as it is to the celebrated Magnolia Springs, with its vast hunting grounds, will be a sufficient inducement to invite sportsmen from all sections. ”

“ Let me here explain that Lake Drummond is the centre of the swamp's organism, acting precisely like a heart. Except the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs along the border, all the roads, canals, and ditches that pierce the swamp, radiate from the lake like spokes from a hub.
The swamp has only one natural feature—the lake. All the rest is simply swamp. The canals and roads are accidents. ”

“ When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. ”

“ A rumor came, that from the highest point overlooking the Lake in the Dismal Swamp, a huge black horse, with two riders, was seen to jump directly into the lake and never rose again. From the same fisherman, who dwelt on some high knoll in the swamp the report was scattered far and wide, that at 10 o’clock every bright night was seen a little white canoe, lit with firefly lamps, pushed swiftly through the waters of the lake by a beautiful girl with fair locks floating over her shoulders. ”

“ One day a start was made in a canoe from a small settlement on the edge of the great Dismal Swamp, and on went our three friends deeper and deeper into the wilds.
At last the professor grew tired of the sameness of the journey.
"How much further into this wild swamp do you intend to go, Frank?" he asked.
"I am going till I get a shot at a golden heron."
"Nonsense! There is no golden heron." ”

“ An opening from the lake to the tide, on the Elizabeth River on the one side and the Pasquotank on the other, would have a fall of twenty-two and six-tenths feet in a distance of less than fifteen miles."
Why, then, is not the lake tapped and its superfluous and injurious water drained? If the Dismal Swamp lie on the side of a hill, as science proves, and the flow of the water demonstrates, why does not its superfluous water run off into the sea? ”

“ You might travel up and down the canal as often as you choose and outside of snakes and pole cats nothing would ever appear. Do not let snake stories deter you from visiting this wonderful and beautiful place, the Lake of the Dismal Swamp. As the boat was being driven along, the driver said: "Boss, did I nebber told you about de big watermillion that Mars. Caleb Busby foun' near dis place?" "No ”

“ Their nature is recognized by the vacillation and unsteadiness of the ground, which undulates under the pressure of a heavy weight like that of a railway train. At other places, as in the Dismal swamp, the formation is mixed. A bed of peat 15 ft. thick is formed over the swamps around Drummond lake, by the debris of large trees and of an impenetrable grove of canes, whose roots penetrate deeply into thick layers of sphagnum. It is there extremely difficult to reach the borders of the lake. ”

“ The works intended to continue the navigation beyond the sounds connected with the Dismal Swamp canal, have not been completed, and to the south of the Chesapeake the line is, therefore, imperfect; but steamboats run from Charleston to Savannah, by the channels and lagoons between the mainland and the low islands which yield the famous long-staple cotton. ”

“ I arrived at London on the day I had appointed for my return, but was detained there until a late hour; feeling anxious, however, to get home that night, supposing that I was expected,—I therefore hired a horse to ride the remaining fifteen miles to the settlement.
The road from London to Wilberforce led through a swamp, known as "McConnell's Dismal Swamp," and it was indeed, one of the most dreary places in all that section of country. I am certain that a hundred men might conceal themselves within a rod of the highway, without being discovered. ”

“ Brown prepared some ciderberry juice for him, with some pepper and other things that they had along which, after taking, Jones became more quiet. Brown says that when he thinks about that snake story it fills him so with laughter that he has to buckle a strap around him to support his physical organization. Jones has not ventured to the Lake since that time, and Brown is afraid to tell him that the snake in the boat was only a piece of rattan. If you want to see snakes come to Suffolk and get Brown to go with you to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, and he will amuse you to your heart's content. ”

“ Woodward, "you are not such a bad fisherman after all. Your success would do credit to the best." My father proposed to Mr. W. that we should have some of the fish cleaned and cooked for supper. The necessary order being given, in a short time a sufficient number were ready for the pan. A hot fire was made of juniper logs, and frying of fish commenced. In a short time we were told to get our shingles ready, that being the only kind of plate used in the "Dismal Swamp." ”

“ They have a clayey bottom, overlaid with a vegetable compost, and when drained have proved exceedingly fertile. One of these tracts is known by the name of the Dismal Swamp; it is thirty miles long and ten broad, overgrown with pine, juniper, and cypress trees. ”

“ Splashed with mud and slime on top of our coating of axle grease, scratched by brambles and bruised by limbs of dead trees which protruded from the most unexpected places, the slaves in the dismal swamp finally found a soft spot to sit down and weep with a great lamentation. We had a disturbing hunch from our experience in the bog 27water that our Ethiopian camouflage was not going to be removed with any such dexterity as the Mayo boy had assured us so glibly. ”

“ I could relate many interesting stories that I have heard about the Swamp, but as I am writing from my own observation, will discard all such from my task. It is true that some very mysterious things have been seen at various times. I will, digressing a little from my story, relate one circumstance that was told me by a gentlemen who lived in Suffolk and was stopping at Lake Drummond Hotel, situated near the lake shore, and which was visited at that time by many persons from New York and other places. ”

“ De har 'gin tu rise on my hed an' I ax him ef dat was a fac'. He sed dat he was told so in Norfolk. It was gin out dar dat a mity putty gal had loss her sweethart, an' had dun gone crazy, an' had gone to de Lake ob de Dismal Swamp an' drown herself, an' dat she ken be seen ebery night by de lite ob some sort ob fli." "I tell you, boss," continued the old man, "when he tole me 'bout dat gal paddlin' dat bote on de Lake at nite, I diden' want to go any furder wid him, but he tole me dar wud be no danger. I cud not see hur, so I carrid him on to de Lake. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the railroad passes across the spur which lies between the rough country to the north and the flat, swampy country to the south.
"I have not been able to gain any very exact information about those swamps, but from the best opinions I can get, I should assume that it is a sort of another Dismal Swamp down there. Men and cattle, horses and sheep have been known to wander in there, and never return. Presumably they were lost in the swamps or——"
"Or else eaten up by the yeggmen," suggested Patsy. ”

“ The center of Great Dismal is occupied by Drummond’s Lake, an oval basin six miles long and three wide, with perpendicular banks and fifteen feet depth of water. In and around this lake is a veritable paradise for hunters, for its waters abound with fish and wild fowl, and the adjacent woods are the favorite haunts of deer, bears, wild-cats, coons and swamp-rabbits. The region, inexpressibly dreary as it is, contributes largely to commerce by furnishing immense supplies of timber. ”

“ It is a well-known fact that Northern invalids are not afraid of alligators, bears, snakes, pole cats or any of the poisonous insects that infest the Swamp and Lake. There are a few timid persons living near the Lake, on the edge of the Swamp, who are sometimes driven out of their houses by the appearance of bears and snakes, but they are few in number, and seldom or ever visit the Lake. ”

“ Usage familiarizes the dwellers of the swamp with the peculiarities of their location, and gives them the advantage in it that a mountaineer has in his own mountains. Besides, they who take their life in their hand exercise their faculties with more vigor and clearness than they who have only money at stake; and this advantage the negroes had over the hunters. ”

“ In truth, there was a suggestion of something monstrous in all that the eye could see in Black Swamp. The heavy, indeterminate masses of dark mud, or patches of black water, lying deep between and under the contortions of the roots; the thick, gray rags of dead cedar-bark; the rotting stumps, some uprooted and half engulfed in the inert morass; the overpowering windless shadow, which lay thick as if no sound had ever jarred it; above all, the gigantic tangle of trunks and roots, stagnantly motionless, with the strained stillness that is not of peace, but of a nightmare. ”

“ The sudden, unexpected knoll, dark, somehow, even in the mid-day sunlight, the circle of huge monoliths, the mound in the center, the enormous flat slab on its top, rusty red with an unspeakable eldrich stain which even the rains and winds of centuries could not blot out!
He had never spoken of his discovery to anyone. The swamp was a forbidden place—ostensibly because of rumored quicksands and poisonous serpents. But on more than one occasion he had seen old-time villagers cross themselves when mention was made of the area. ”

“ The lying position we needs must retain all day long aided that tendency, and yet we were always so wet and cold that real sleep was difficult to secure.
In this district the swamps were numerous and difficult to cross. The small ditches and canals that drained them or the almost equally swampy fields added to our grief. The feet slipped back at each muddy step: We fell into ditches: Dogs barked: And we almost wept.
Once a dog helped us by his barking. It was night and we were crossing a very bad swamp, an old peat bog which was full of the ditches and holes that the peat had been taken from. ”

“ The Guardsman was bent on shooting an alligator, and having heard that these pleasant saurians swarmed in a swamp beyond the town, went there at dusk with his rifle, and I, very foolishly, was induced to accompany him. There is something most uncanny in these tracts of swamp at nightfall. The twisted, distorted trees, the gleaming, evil-smelling pools of water, and the immense, snake-like lianes hanging from the branches all give one a curious sense of unreality, especially on a moonlight night. It is like a Gustave Dore drawing of a bewitched forest. ”

“ A wide stretch of steaming swamp, intersected with inky streams of stinking water, a breeding-place for the fever-propagating mosquito and a home for all the loathsome creeping things of the island, it is almost as bad as some of the pestilential swamps of the West African coast, and seen in its beautiful setting of blue seas and golden beach dotted with graceful green palms, it looks even worse. ”