Swamp land

“ That long, wide stretch of land, forty years ago reckoned an irreclaimable swamp, fit only to be gazed on and moaned over, is now one of the grandest sights, as an agricultural and pastoral district, anywhere to be witnessed. 'Tis a transformation indeed, not yet altogether completed, however, as owners, either impecunious or absentee, have left specimens of what was the original swamp in a modified degree, for improvements have been effected by the labour and expenditure of neighbours, of which the drones gain the benefit. ”

“ The explanation is not difficult; streams flow constantly, or rather ooze into the Great Dismal Swamp from the land that lies to the west, but instead of bringing mud in with them as rivers bring to the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind. ”

“ FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we have suddenly had dropped upon us a balmy, warm, summer day,—thermometer at eighty; and every thing out of doors growing so fast, that you may see and hear it grow.
The swampy belt of land in front of the house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest 138 to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wild-rose-bushes there are covered with buds; and the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid little feathers of verdure. This swamp is one of those crooks in our lot which occasions a never-ceasing conflict of spirit. ”

“ All the lands bordering on lakes and streams are taken. Every acre where hay can be cut. As no one can find means to live away from the water, the surrounding country for some miles becomes a cattle range for the land grabber. Up to the highest high water mark and above it the land surrounding lakes or lying along streams is called swamp land, even in places where water could not be had by digging to the depth of 30 feet. ”

“ The country adjacent to the village where I was studying, is, on two sides, swamp of the vilest, muddiest nature imaginable, with occasional tracts of fine land, generally situated on some bayou or lake; frequently an “island” of tillable land will be found rising out of the muddy swamp, accessible to footmen or horse only, when the river is within its banks, varying in size from fifty to two hundred acres; and, wherever existing, generally occupied by a small planter. ”

“ I moved off at dawn this morning with a party, but after following the direction of the stream for several miles I found that the whole of the land between it and the foot of the hills had been rendered by the heavy rains a marsh quite impassable for horses, which was rendered the more annoying as the swamp was not more than a mile in width, so that this slight space alone prevented us from pursuing our desired route. Nothing however was now left us but to turn once more to the north-west, and thus to endeavour to head the marsh. ”

“ Soon we gained the southern extremity of the swamp, and we continued our course south and east. It was a pleasant land. The air was warm, and we were again in the forest. Later on we crossed a low-lying range of hills and found ourselves in an even better forest country. The farther we penetrated from the coast the warmer we found it, and we went on and on until we came to a large river that seemed familiar to the Swift One. It was where she must have come during the four years' absence from the harde. This river we crossed on logs, landing on side at the large bluff. ”

“ His place of retreat, or rather, his lair—for it was more like the haunt of some wild beast than the abode of human beings—was on the west side of the swamp above mentioned, where nature seemed to have provided him with a retreat more impregnable than art could have furnished him. A point of land projects into the western side of the marsh, affording only a very narrow and difficult foothold for one man to pass between its base and an inlet of the pond which washes the foot of the rocks. ”

“ The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is, by survey, about twenty-three feet higher than the sea, and it is not fifteen miles from tide-water, the intervening land being a level slope, and, except for the trees, exceedingly easy to channel. ”

“ With men of congenial minds he discussed a plan for draining and turning into pasture land a great swamp nearly thirty miles long and ten miles wide. He made the necessary inspection himself, both on foot and on horseback. The tour was exceedingly toilsome and dangerous in many spots. ”

“ In the neighborhood of its fan-like, many-mouthed delta the tawny giant has deposited its muddy sediment for so many ages that it has created hundreds of square miles of low swamp lands, on which only coarse grasses and stunted willows grow. ”

“ Large areas of swamp and in some instances shallow lakes have been connected with the tidal waters of the neighboring rivers by channels cut through intervening ridges of upland, thus effecting the double purpose of draining and of admitting the mud-laden tides. In this way, in five or ten years, many acres of worthless swamp have been converted into valuable dike-land.
The use of marsh mud as a fertilizer is very general among farmers to whom it is accessible. ”

“ Before me is the reedy swamp, with its open patches of water, glittering like mirrors in the bright sunlight, rippled in all directions by busy beavers: some making a hasty retreat to their castles, others swimming craftily along, crawl on to the domes and peep at the intruder. ”

“ Yes, we know that swamp, and other swamps only less well. We know the rock ledges, the big dry woods of oak and chestnut and maple and beech. We know the ravines where the great hemlocks keep the air always dim and still, and one goes silent-footed over the needle floor. We grow familiar, too, with all the little things about the country. We discover new haunts of the fringed gentian, the wonderful, the capricious, with its unbelievable blue that one sees nowhere else save under the black lashes of some Irish eyes. ”

“ Instead of the funereal gloom, the slime, the rank growth, and crowding horrors of the great swamp, here was a cleared space, acres in extent, bathed in sunlight, and alive with cheerful human activity. ”

“ The idea of a swamp had always presented itself to our mind’s eye as a vast expanse of shiny, slushy soil, half mud, half water, with here and there a rank undergrowth of bushes and stiff grass, and briers, through which it must be a melancholy task to travel,—but it is not so. In travelling through these swampy regions the prospect is neither a dull nor an uninteresting one; whole forests of grand old trees rise up from the watery waste, the rich varied foliage growing so{47} luxuriantly, and in such impenetrable masses that scarce a ray of sunshine comes glinting through. ”

“ This task of winning the swamp lands to agriculture has been more completely accomplished in England than elsewhere, but it has gone far on the continent of Europe, particularly in Germany. In the United States, owing to the fact that lands have been cheap, little of this work of swamp-draining has as yet been accomplished. ”

“ Every farmer with his wife and children, for twenty miles round in every direction, with waggons, carriages, and horses, flocked to see the operation; and a swamp always noted for being the solitary and dismal abode of snakes and frogs, became the active scene of curiosity and bustle; the greater part astonished at the whim of an old man in travelling two hundred miles from his home, to dig up as a treasure, at incredible risk, labour, and expence, a pile of bones, which, although all were astonished to see, many imagined fit for nothing better than to rot and serve for manure. ”

“ Breasting the torrent, we have rushed past crowded levee, past sloop, and ship, and shallop, past steamers of every class and build, ocean cruisers, river monarchs, bayou traders, swamp prowlers. Lordly up-stream packets lead or follow; churches, domes, chimneys, cotton-presses, elevators, warehouses, give way to low, one-storied, whitewashed cottages, or deep-veranda'd frame homesteads on the one side, to flat and open plantations on the other. Eastward there is naught to span the horizon but one far-reaching level of swamp or trembling prairie. ”

“ We crossed the bamboo swamp, where I cut a fine mast for my boat, and came at length to a small opening or defile in the ridge of rocks, where a little torrent rushed from its source down into the larger stream beyond; here we determined to make a halt, in order to erect a great earth wall across the narrow gorge, which, being thickly planted with prickly pear, Indian fig, and every thorny bush we could find, would in time form an effectual barrier against the intrusion of wild beasts, the cliffs being, to the best of our belief, in every other part inaccessible. ”

“ There was at times no well-defined channel, and often we could hear the gurgling waters hurrying beneath our feet, yet catch no glimpse of them.
Here, too, other springs welled to the surface, and the augmented volume of waters finally left the swamp a stream of considerable size, which, after a tortuous course through many fields, entered a deep and narrow ravine. After untold centuries the brook has worn away the surface soil over which it originally flowed, then the gravel beneath, and so down to the clay, thirty feet below. ”

“ Now and again, indeed, sportsmen of the bolder sort presume to penetrate far into this pathless labyrinth of bush and brake; but they are forced to wind their way among the trees in canoes which may at any moment be upset by the twisted tangle of roots stretching far and wide beneath the water, and it is just in these very places that the swamp is many fathoms deep ”

“ Gently undulating, and with a slight slope northerly and easterly, its general surface aspect is that of a great swamp, sparsely covered with stunted and deformed trees, that reach a growth approaching their normal only along the immediate banks of the rivers where drainage is afforded by frequent short gullies into the trenches that constitute the river valleys. ”

“ I felt as though forbidden to enter the mysteries of the swamp, as though warned that 3 danger lay within those aisles of twilight. The veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the stillness of the gloom, and a hush of expectation held every leaf motionless. The branches closed behind me and I stole on between lofty trees with mossy trunks, over fallen logs, and through the dripping jungle of ferns. Upland woods are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than swamp growth, but they have not the effect of tropical luxuriance which the swamp forest possesses. ”

“ The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire. ”

“ There is a roaring, impetuous brook emptying into Second Fork, called “Rock Run.” It heads in a level swamp, near the summit of the mountain. The swamp contains about forty acres, and is simply a level bed of loose stones, completely overgrown with bright green moss.
“Rock Run” heads in a strong, ice-cold spring, but is soon sunken and lost among the loose stones of the swamp. Just where the immense hemlocks, that make the swamp a sunless gloom, get their foothold, is one of the things I shall never find out. But, all the same, they are there. ”

“ It was an ordinary frame house standing on brick legs, and situated on a barren knoll, which, because of the dead level of marsh and swamp and deserted fields from which it rose, seemed to achieve the loneliness of a real height. The south and west sides of the house looked out on marsh and swamp; the north and east sides on a wide stretch of old fields grown up in broom-grass. Beyond the marsh rolled a river, now quite beyond its banks with a freshet; beyond the swamp, which was a cypress swamp, rose a railway embankment leading to a bridge that crossed the river. ”

“ Swamps will be met and must be avoided, for a wilderness swamp is practically impassable. Streams can be forded, but lakes must be encompassed, and even an upland forest is but a tangled jungle of fallen trees and undergrowth. ”

“ To many, a swamp or marsh brings only the very practical thought of whether it can be readily drained. Let us rejoice, however, that many marshes cannot be thus easily wiped out of existence, and hence they remain as isolated bits of primeval wilderness, hedged about by farms and furrows. The water is the life-blood of the marsh,—drain it, and reed and rush, bird and batrachian, perish or disappear. The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation,—melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man. ”

“ This swamp was long a very dismal place. Fish, and water-birds, and rats inhabited it: and here and there stood the hut of a fowler; or a peat-stack raised by the people who lived on the hills round, and who obtained their fuel from the peat-lands in the 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. ”