Canoeing in the Dismal Swamp, by John Boyle O'Reilly
Published: Boston, Pilot Publishing Company; Athletics and Manly Sport,
1890, Pages 350-452
Note: Historical account of the Swamp
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Canoeing in the Dismal Swamp
THE Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina is one of the celebrated
features of the American continent. Its name is almost as familiar as
Niagara or the Rocky Mountains. Its limits are not easily defined, no
careful survey or good map of the region having ever been made. It lies in
two States, on the Virginia side in the counties of Nansemond and Princess
Anne, and on the North Carolina side in the counties of Gates, Pasquotank,
Camden, and Currituck. Almost in the centre lies Lake Drummond, or "the
Lake of the Dismal Swamp," which is seven miles by five in extent,
according to local records, but three miles by two and a half by our
measurement. The area of the swamp is between eight hundred and one
thousand square miles. Its reputation is that of a morass of forbidden and
appalling gloom, a region impenetrable to the search of student or hunter;
the fecund bed of fever and malaria, infested with deadly serpents and
wild beasts; the old-time refuge of fugitive slaves, who preferred life in
its lonely recesses to the life-in-death of the slave-quarter and the man-
market. It is supposed by the outer world, and even by those who reside on
its borders, to be a hopeless wilderness, an incurable ulcer on the
earth's surface, a place that would have been long ago forgotten but for
its shadowy romance,--for its depths were once enlightened, though it is
over fourscore years ago, by the undying song of a famous poet. Some of
this evil character is true, but most of it is untrue, and much of the
slander has not been accidental, but deliberate.
It is true that the hunted slave often heard the baying of the bloodhounds
as he crouched in the cane-brake of the Dismal Swamp, or plunged into its
central lake to break the trail, and true also that its hundreds of miles
of waterlogged forest is infested with repulsive and deadly creatures,
reptile and beast, bear, panther, wild-cat and snake; but it is not true
that the Dismal Swamp is an irreclaimable wilderness, the pestilent source
of miasma and malaria.
The Dismal Swamp is an agony of perverted nature. It is Andromeda, not
waiting for the monster, but already in his grasp, broken and silent under
the intolerable embrace.
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
enmity 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. The bleached roots of the doomed trees seem to
shudder and shrink from the weltering death. There is an evident bending
upward of the overtaken roots to escape suffocation. The shores of the
lake are like a scene from the "Inferno." Matted, twisted, and broken, the
roots, like living things in danger, arch themselves out of the dark
flood, pitifully striving to hold aloft their noble stems and branches.
The water of the lake, dark almost as blood, from the surface flow of
juniper sap and other vegetable matter, is forced from six to ten feet
above its natural level, and driven by winds hither to this bank to-day
and thither to-morrow, washing every vestige of earth from the helpless
life-givers, till its whole circumference is a woful net-work of gnarled
trunks and intertwined fibres, bleached and dry as the bones of a
skeleton, and sheltering no life, but that of the blue lizard and red-
throated moccasin.
These bare roots and blasted stumps circle the water like a hideous crown,
till the lake becomes a realization of the Medusa. Here, far from the
voices of mankind, the Gorgon stares at heaven, but sees with introverted
eye only the writhing horror of her own brow; hears only the hiss, and
shrinks from the kiss of her serpent locks, gazing into no living eyes but
those of her own damnable strands.
The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is a victim waiting for deliverance. Release
her, and she is no longer Medusa; the snake hair will give place to bands
of gold and light; the region contaminated by her oppression will rejoice
and blossom like a garden.
The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is the well of the swamp's desolation. The
swamp is not from itself, but from the well.
The region of the Dismal Swamp was intended by nature to be a pleasure
ground, a health resort, and a game preserve for the eastern side of the
continent. In spite of all that has been done and left undone to destroy
it, the swamp itself is, probably, the healthiest spot in America. Its
delicious juniper water prevents malaria more effectually and perfectly
than the famed eucalyptus of Australia. The flying game of the continent
centres in this region, and the lake in winter is the best shooting ground
in the country. Now that wealthy clubs and individuals are buying up the
coast shooting, this incomparable natural preserve ought to be secured for
the nation or the State.
Its original undoing was probably some accident or cataclysm of nature,
changing a water course or opening a crater-like spring or number of
springs.
But the remedy from the first was as easy and as open to intelligence as
the tapping of a vein to prevent plethora. The lake, it is probable, was
the centre and the cause of the swamp, as is proved by the streams flowing
out of, instead of into, it. Its overflowing waters, when swelled by rains
or springs, finding no natural channel of escape, rose foot by foot to the
very lip of the cup, covering the beach and reaching the densely wooded
shore.
In this way has been brought about the singular condition of the lake,
which, instead of being the lowest, is the highest portion of the Dismal
Swamp. It could be pierced and drained at any point, and reduced to
natural and beautiful proportions Its overflow, instead of constantly
deluging the surrounding land, could be guided in ten thousand sparkling
channels to enrich and adorn its wonderful environment.
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.
And, stranger still, the channels have been dug for over one hundred
years; but they are locked up at the outer ends with wooden gates. Ponder
on this marvellous fact: the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, three miles by two
and one half in extent, and from seven to fifteen feet in depth, is
situated on the side, and almost on the top, of a hill, beside a tidal
river, and yet it creates by overflow all around it for about one thousand
square miles, one of the densest and darkest morasses on the surface of
the earth.
In 1763, George Washington surveyed the Dismal Swamp, and discovered that
the western side was much higher than the eastern, and that rivers ran out
of the swamp, and not into it. He then wrote that the swamp was "neither a
plain nor a hollow, but a hill-side."
A member of the National Geological Survey recently entered the Dismal
Swamp, proceeding westward from the Dismal Swamp Canal toward the lake,
and found that the rise in the land was five and one-half feet in seven
miles. We met this gentleman, Mr. Atkinson, within the bounds of the
swamp, and on hearing his statement asked him, "Could the lake be lowered
and the swamp. drained with such an incline?"
"Certainly," he said. "It is a very decided water-shed. 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?
If the whole extent of the Dismal Swamp, land and lake together, is from
twelve to twenty-five feet higher than the sea level, while actually
adjoining the sea., why, in the name of reason, is it not drained and
reclaimed?
These are the vital questions relating to the Dismal Swamp. I shall answer
them one by one, and the answer in each case shall not be an opinion, but
a demonstration.
In the month of May, 1888, two sunburned white men in cedar canoes turned
at right angles from the broad water of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and
entered the dark and narrow channel, called the Feeder, that pierces the
very heart of the swamp, and supplies the great canal with water from Lake
Drummond, or the "Lake of the Dismal Swamp." The men in the canoes were
Mr. Edward A. Moseley and the writer of this article.
These were almost the first canoes, except the "white canoe" of the poet,
that ever paddled on the breast of the dusky lake since the disappearance
of the Indian hunters a century ago. The only boats known to the lake are
the long, rude "dugouts," of the negroes, and the flat-bottomed dories or
punts, of the farmers along the east side of the canal.
While we were in the main canal we found the banks high, especially on the
western side, where the diggings and dredgings of the channel have been
heaped for a century. On this side, behind the bank, lay the unbroken
leagues of swamp, crowded with dense timber and canebrake jungle, the
surface of the land or mire being considerably lower than the surface of
the canal. On the east side ran the road, and beyond this, long stretches
of level country, formerly part of the Dismal Swamp, but now more or less
cleared, with here and there a farm of astonishing superiority, and at
long intervals a straggling village, usually connected with a saw-mill for
juniper and cypress. Originally the canal ran right through the swamp,
which it now borders on the eastern side.
[image caption: plot map along borders of Dismal Swamp Canal, east of Lake]
The land east of the canal has been cleared, because it has been drained
into the sea. The fall is to the east. But all the land west of the canal
is still unrelieved and "dismal" swamp.
How is this? Does not the land on the west side drain into the canal, as
the land eastward has drained into the sea? No! the canal has completely
stopped drainage; it is higher than all the western swamp.
Then came the startling suggestion, striking us both at the same time.
This canal is a cruel ligature on the vitals of the swamp, shutting it in
on itself and suffocating it. The canal is higher than the swamp, and
instead of draining it, drowns it. The canal is a straggler, and here
before our eyes was a deliberate process of land murder!
But I have outstripped the canoes. Let me begin at the beginning, and tell
this story of a delightful summer outing, and stop this "damnable
iteration" of the sufferings and wrongs of the Dismal Swamp. The swamp
cannot grieve at whatever infamy may be put upon it. What does it care, or
who does care whether the wonderful lake be ringed with silver sand or
hedged with bleached roots and twisting serpents? "But the pity of it,
Iago! Oh, Iago, the pity of it!"
Go back again to Norfolk with me, and try to forget that you have been
inside the gates of this brown-water canal of the Dismal Swamp. It was not
fair to begin my tale in the middle. Surely I have made a mistake and told
the story of the swamp too soon. But I have only told the story; it
remains for me yet to prove it.
It is seven o'clock in the morning, and we two are in the market of
Norfolk buying bacon, salt pork, hard bread, cheese, a ham, an alcohol
stove, and all the necessaries for a few weeks' sojourn in the wilderness.
At eight o'clock, breakfast over, we are getting into rough suits in the
office of Gen. Groner, of the Merchants' and Miners' Transportation
Company, whose courtesy we shall remember with pleasure.
At ten o'clock we are on board a tug, kindly placed at our disposal by Mr.
R.B. Cook, the virile manager of the N.Y.,P.&N. Railroad, to take us to
the first lock on the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs into the Elizabeth
river about seven miles from Norfolk. Just think of it! the entrance to
the Dismal Swamp only seven miles from the busiest city in the South, a
city that is destined to become one of the greatest commercial ports on
the continent!
Let me stop here to moralize over this laggard among the great commercial
cities, this voluntary Cinderella, who was born with the diadem on her
brow, but allowed it to grow tarnished, and at last to be taken from her
head by a less favored rival. Norfolk has vast advantages over any other
seaport on the Atlantic coast. They are apparent to every observing
stranger; but they have never been properly estimated or developed by her
own. Norfolk could have led the van of all the Eastern cities in the race
for commercial prosperity; but she let the breeze go past without
unreefing her sails; and she saw the slower hulls of Baltimore, Boston,
Philadelphia, and New Orleans, pass her under clouds of canvas and sail
clean out of sight. What What is the matter with Norfolk? What ails
Virginia, that she is not the proud mother of a greater New York? The
possibilities of Norfolk have always been in full view. Thomas Jefferson,
who was a student of the favored localities and resources of the country,
and especially of his own State, declared that Norfolk was destined to be
"the great emporium of the Chesapeake." Madison agreed with Jefferson,
holding it to be "the true interest of Virginia to foster the prosperity
of Norfolk, as among the prime objects of her policy." But Virginia acted
like a stepmother, stolidly spending twenty million dollars to improve
Richmond, to one hundred and ninety thousand dollars to develop Norfolk.
In later days, Maury said: "Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the
business of the Atlantic seaboard. It is midway on the coast; it has a
back country of great fertility and resources; and as to the approaches
from the ocean, there is no harbor, from St. John to the Rio Grande, which
has the same facility of ingress and egress at all times and in all
weathers. * * * Virginia saw those advantages, and slept on them."
But she is waking; or at least Norfolk is waking to her own interests; and
with men of extraordinary intelligence and energy, like Gen. Groner and
Mr. Cook, above mentioned, who are each building up enormous commercial
enterprises, it is probable that even in our own time, we shall see the
radiance of this aroused Southern Cinderella, as she reaches northward for
her borrowed coronet.
But we have kept the tug waiting more than an hour, and the captain, a
manly, weather-tanned fellow, apologizes for having to keep an engagement
to tow a railroad float across the harbor, before he starts with us for
the lock.
What matter for a few hours' delay here or there? We have cut our social
and orderly bonds, and we gladly sit and smoke on the tug, while she pulls
and pushes and screams and at last backs the tremendous float into open
water, and buckles to her heavy tow with the grunting earnestness of
honest toil. We also improve the waiting by arranging our baggage, oiling
gun and rifle, fixing hooks and lines, and otherwise giving a last touch
to the arrangements.
At one o'clock the tug started with us for the lock. There was a queer
nervousness about us as we neared the place, caused by our complete
ignorance of what the swamp was like.
"You see that schooner yonder?" said the captain of the tug, looking
across the fields round which the crooked river winds. "She is lying at
the lock of the canal, loading with lumber from the swamp."
Presently one of the hands on the tug pointed to the water; the river had
grown dark like the stream from a dye-works. "See," he said, "that is the
juniper water of the Dismal Swamp."
It was singular that neither the captain nor his men could tell anything
about the swamp. Their knowledge ended at the lock. This is characteristic
of the whole neighboring population. Richmond knows as little about the
swamp as Boston; even Norfolk and Suffolk know little more.
"All I know," said the captain, "is that there are lots of snakes in
there."
"And bears," says another.
"And panthers," says a third, and so on, and so on, while each one gave a
friendly hand to launch the canoes as we closed to a wharf near the lock,
where about thirty colored men were loading a schooner with lumber and
bundled shingles of juniper and cypress.
"If I were going in there, I'd keep my Smith-and-Wesson handy," said the
second hand on the tug, as we touched the shore. Before we could ask the
meaning of the unpleasant hint (which we found to be a libel on the
swamp), the sturdy little steamer had backed out, and was whistling "Good-
by."
The crowd of colored workmen stopped and stared at our heap of baggage,
and at the handsome, varnished little boats, but soon were recalled to
their work, and we were left to go on packing the canoes.
The lock-keeper, a gaunt, badly-dressed white man, sauntered down from his
lock to take a look at the strange boats. He was very obviously chewing
tobacco, and he spoke slowly and nasally.
Before the loading was half done, our first and almost our last misfortune
occurred. Mr. Moseley's canoe, with timbers warped from a winter's
storage, was leaking like a sieve. Out must come the packages again--pork,
blankets, camera, ammunition, etc.
"What shall we do now?"
"Hire a mule to tow us, and keep bailing the canoe till the wood swells
and stops the leak."
"Mr. Lockman," we asked, "can you let us have a mule?"
"Yes," very slowly, and looking at the boats, not at us. "I have a mule;
but them boats won't tow."
"But we know better. They will tow. Can we have the mule?"
"Them boats won't tow," still more slowly.
"Can we have the mule?" impatiently.
"Not to tow them boats. They won't tow, I tell ye."
Argument and entreaty were in vain. It was none of his business we held,
and we knew better than he, anyway; but the man was stubborn, though not
at all sullen.
It was getting late in the afternoon, and we had intended reaching, that
evening, the house of Capt. Wallace, who had a large farm in the swamp,
about twelve or fifteen miles up the canal, and to whom a friend of
Moseley's had written about our trip.
At last we compromised with the lockman, who let us have the mule and a
cart, with a one-legged colored driver, to carry our baggage to the
village of Deep Creek, a few miles up the canal. Then we entered the first
lock of the Dismal Swamp Canal, directly from the tide-water of the
Elizabeth River, and were raised probably eight feet to the lowest level
of the canal. This means that if this lower lock were opened, the whole
Dismal Swamp could be drained to the depth of eight feet.
We parted from the unreasonable lockman with no kindly feelings; but we
learned before night that his intentions had not only been kind, but
exceptionally honest, and his knowledge quite correct of the towing
qualities of an eighty-pound canoe.
A word about the history of the canal. A company for the cutting of the
Dismal Swamp Canal was chartered by the States of Virginia and North
Carolina, in 1787, and both States subscribed generously to the stock. The
United States Congress also became a large stockholder. The names of
George Washington and Patrick Henry were among the first subscribers for
the stock; though this canal for commerce must not be confounded with an
earlier system of canals or ditches, devised by Washington himself for the
purpose of reclaiming the swamp by lightering the timber to the frontier.
These canals still exist; but the charter of the commercial canal gave it
absolute rights over the waters of the lake and all other canals in the
swamp. It was not opened till 1822, in which year the first vessel passed
through to Norfolk from the Albemarle Sound. It was completed in 1828.
The cost of cutting the canal and its tributaries was about twelve hundred
thousand dollars, and it is estimated that the expense of the earlier
canals, also largely from public money, was several hundred thousand
dollars more.
The Dismal Swamp Canal runs nearly north and South, joining the Elizabeth
River to the Pasquotank, above Elizabeth City, N. C., the distance between
those points being about forty miles. The canal is forty feet wide,
chartered to be eight feet deep, fresh water, the color of dark brandy or
strong breakfast tea (the color caused by the juniper sap and other
vegetable qualities), but clear and palatable, and singularly wholesome.
The banks, where we could see the cutting under the foliage, were composed
of fine yellow sand mixed with broken shells. A profusion of wild-rose
bushes, myrtle, sweet bay, flowering laurel, white blackberry blossoms,
and honeysuckle leaned over the water and made a most lovely border.
The afternoon was pleasant, with a cool wind in our favor, and, though Mr.
Moseley had bailing enough to do, we reached Roper's enormous saw-mill and
factory, at Deep Creek, in about an hour. The yards of the factory swarmed
with colored workmen, and the works covered a large area. There were
immense piles of railroad ties, cypress shingles, laths, and juniper saw-
logs on the side of the canal, which here widened out like a harbor. The
violent rising scream of the saws sounded everywhere, something like "p-sh-
sh-sh-sh -- hai-ai-AI-AI!" the last note an ear-splitting squeal, like a
pig in direful pain.
Mr. John L. Roper, the owner of this saw-mill, leases the timber land of
almost the entire swamp to supply his mill. He keeps in the swamp probably
one hundred men or more, in different gangs, cutting juniper and cypress,
which they drag by mules over the "gum roads" to the lake, whence it is
lightered through the Feeder to the Dismal Swamp Canal, and by this means
carried to the saw-mill at Deep Creek. The colored workers in the juniper
groves of the swamp are its only inhabitants; they are called "swampers."
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.
Whoever would know the Dismal Swamp must study it from the lake, not from
the exterior. This is the reason that even those living in its
neighborhood know so little about it. Their knowledge is local, not
constitutional.
A "gum road" is a road formed by trunks of trees about eight feet long,
laid close together, and bearing two rude wooden rails. On these run low
mule wagons or trucks, loaded with logs cut in the interior. The mule goes
securely on the "gum road," and the negro driver usually walks ahead on
one of the broad rails.
There was no one at Roper's saw-mill who could give us any information, so
we paddled on to the village of Deep Creek, before reaching which we
passed through another lock. Here the Dismal Swamp proper may be said to
begin. At this lock we were again raised several feet, so that we were
now, although only a few miles from tidal-water, probably sixteen feet
above the sea level.
"Shall we pay toll here?" we asked the lockman.
"Not till you come out," he answered, making it clear that there was only
one entrance and exit on this side of the Dismal Swamp.
"Does the swamp begin here?"
"Yes," said the lockman, leaning at an angle of forty. degrees, and slowly
pushing the great beam with his back. "It begins here, and it runs all the
way to Florida."
This was true, in a way. The whole southern coast is margined by swamp
lands; but the Dismal Swamp is not of them. It is high land instead of low
land; its water is fresh, instead of salt or brackish. Among swamps it is
an abnormality. It leans over the sea, and yet contains its own moisture,
like a bowl. Indeed, the Dismal Swamp is a great bowl, forty miles long,
and ten to twenty miles wide, and, strange to say, with its highest water
in the centre. The sides of the bowl are miles of fallen and undecaying
trees, fixed in a mortar of melted leaves and mould. Deep in the soft
bosom of the swamp are countless millions of feet of precious timber that
has lain there, the immense trunks crossing each other like tumbled
matches, "since the beginning of the world," as a juniper cutter said.
At the village of Deep Creek, the lockman, evidently the leading person of
the place, was a handsome and intelligent man, referred to by every one as
"Mr. Geary." A crowd of mingled white and black awaited our arrival on the
canal bridge; and when we landed,. I was somewhat surprised to see "Mr.
Geary" and Mr. Moseley shake hands most warmly, and proceed arm in arm
like old friends. A lank white man offered me an explanation. "Mr. Geary,"
he said, "is a high Mason. Them two are above me and you. I'm an Odd
Fellow, I am; but them fellows are higher'n me or you."
Mr. Geary was a kindly man, "high Mason" or not. We found later on that he
was widely known as a famous hunter, who probably knew the Dismal Swamp as
well as any man living. He had shot over it all his life. He told us that
the fishing at the lake was "wonderful."
Moseley's canoe still leaking, we hired a team from "Mr." Johnson of Deep
Creek, to carry the baggage to Capt. Wallace's house, and we started to
paddle up the canal.
It was a lovely evening, and the surroundings were so novel and so
unexpectedly attractive, that we can never forget the impression. Far
before us as the eye could reach, ran the canal, narrowing in perspective,
till it closed to a fine point. On the right, rose from the water, a dense
forest of cypress and juniper, flowering poplar, black gum, yellow pine,
maple, and swamp oak, with a marvellous underwood of laurel in ravishing
flower, the very air heavy with the rich perfume, which resembles that of
a tuberose, honeysuckle heaped in delicious blossom, yellow jessamine,
bay, myrtle, purple trumpet flowers of the poison oak-vine, with the ever-
present roses, and white-flowering blackberry hanging into the water.
As the evening darkened, with a clear sky overhead, and a red glow from
the west, reaching over the trees, the effect was almost oppressively
beautiful. No other tree darkens in evening silhouette so impressively as
the two queen trees of the Dismal Swamp, the juniper and cypress. With the
low sun behind them, the clear-cut delicacy of their foliage reminds one
of the exquisite fineness of dried sea mosses on a tinted page. But when
the sun has gone down, and time sky is still flushed with its glory, the
cypress takes on a mystery of dark and refined beauty that is all its own.
It rises still blacker than the dark underwood, the tallest among the
trees, lonely, like a plume. It is not heavy or hearse-like, but thin,
fibrous, the twilight showing through its delicate branches, and tracing
every exquisite needle of its leafage on the air. It seems to be blacker
than the coming night; blacker far in its fine filaments than the
clustered laurel at its feet. The darkness and delicacy of the cypress are
its genius. It does not oppress, it thrills. In the twilight it is the
very plume of death, but of a death uncommon. A yew or a willow is a sign
of mourning; but a cypress in the evening is a symbol of woe.
But with the decline of the lovely day came such a jubilant chorus of
sweet voices! Never have we heard, except in the air of dreamland, such a
concert of delicious bird music. In number and variety the singers were
multiplied beyond conception. Far as we could see along the canal we knew
that the air was vibrant with this harmony.
The thought of such unbroken melody following the eye into the remote
distance was a more delightful music in itself than that which was
ravishing the senses. Here the mocking-bird ceased to mock, and poured out
its own ecstatic soul. The catbird, discordant no longer, shot its clear
joy through time great harmony, and the wren and swamp canary twined their
notes like threads of gossamer through the warp and woof of this
marvellous tapestry of sound.
I shall have to speak by and by of the noxious and horrible denizens of
the swamp. Let me dwell lovingly and gratefully on the pleasure derived
from those that were innocent and delightful.
We let the evening fall on us unresistingly, to drink in the sweet thing
that was around us. We were miles from our destination, but we could not
settle to mere travelling till this incredible vesper song was done. We
sat silent, absorbed, witnessing "the deathbed of a day, how beautiful."
The charm was broken by the happy hailing of two colored boys on the
towpath, who were driving "Mister" Johnson's team with our baggage, and
who had now overtaken us. Then came the thorn of our rose. Moseley's canoe
was still leaking, and while he had been floating off with the divine
mocking-bird, the water had gained on him like a temptation. In an instant
the concert had vanished. The curtain of the commonplace fell over that
finer tympanum that almost hears spiritual voices, and the canoe man was
bailing his boat with a tin dipper, while he grumbled at fate.
The dusky drivers waited on the towpath, and we soon started again,
keeping up a lively conversation from boat to wagon. But the leak grew,
the night was closing, and we were in a very strange land.
"Let us tie a rope to the cart and tow the boats," we cried, and the
picture of riding indolently up the canal was like a charm.
We fastened the canoes bow and stern and tied the longest painter, thirty
or more feet in length, to the tailboard of the cart, and away we went.
But before we had proceeded twenty feet the light rope, slackened by the
rapidity of the light and low boats, caught on a stump by the water side.
The leading canoe felt the pull, and darted headlong to the bank, and had
not the boys at once stopped the horse the canoes would have been pulled
to pieces, or dragged clean up on the towpath.
We tried again and again, with the same result, and then we felt ashamed
of our superior knowledge of a few hours before, and interiorly begged the
nasal lock-keeper's pardon.
"H'ist de kunnues right out, boss," said one of the boys, a little fellow,
exceedingly black, with strongly marked features; "and put 'em on de
wagon."
No sooner said than done. Moseley's boat had about one hundred pounds of
water in her when we turned her over on the bank. The little black fellow
(the other was a head taller and yellow) had a perfect genius for
management. He directed the fastening and arrangement of the canoes; he
was almost too small to assist. He spoke such a hasty and softened dialect
that we could hardly understand him, but he was one of the brainiest and
readiest boys I have ever met, white or black. The conversation of the
boys, as we jogged along, was very interesting. The yellow fellow was an
indefinite character; he knew nothing certainly; the black fellow answered
"yes" or "no," like the working of a trap.
"What bird is that singing now?"
"I t'ink dat a swamp canary, boss," says the yellow youngster, with a
doubtful' glance at his companion, who remains silent, till we ask him,
"Is it a canary?"
"No, dat's a wren," and you feel sure that a wren it is. "Whose farm is
this on the left?" we ask, looking over a most fertile and admirable farm
several miles in extent.
"I t'ink dat farm 'longs to ole man Douglass?" says the yellow fellow,
with a sound, as usual, like a note of interrogation at the end of his
assertion.
"Does it belong to Mr. Douglass?" we ask the black boy.
"No, dat farm Muss Lindsey's," answered the firm little oracle. And the
yellow boy never resented or questioned the black boy's knowledge, while
the black boy never derided or corrected the yellow boy's ignorance.
Lindsey's superb farm, stretching four miles along the canal and reaching
eastward nearly five miles, is as level as a floor and wonderfully
fertile. It was originally dismal swamp, most of it having been reclaimed
within the last thirty years by its present owner, who is a first-rate
farmer, judging from his estate. The canal at first ran right through the
swamp, but now all the land to the east has been cleared. (See map, page
350.)
One of the striking features of this superb Lindsey farm was a row of
enormous barns about three-quarters of a mile apart, and placed along its
centre. Not another building was to be seen.
Were this the time and place for such consideration, we might dwell on the
landlord system evidenced by this large estate, with its many barns, but
no dwelling-houses. This is the mistaken economical system of the South,
and particularly of Virginia. The war has not destroyed the plantation
system. The great southern farmers of to-day stand in about the same
relation to their workmen and tenants as the owners formerly did to their
slaves, but with less responsibility. The homes of the tenant farmers of
Virginia and North Carolina, as we saw them, are a discredit to America.
Sooner or later Virginia will have to face the necessity of establishing
real and permanent small farm proprietorship.
It is hardly fair to criticise the land ownership of such a farm as this,
saved from the Dismal Swamp by the energy and intelligence of its
proprietor. If any ownership be absolutely righteous it must surely be
that of the farmer who not only cultivates, but has reclaimed his farm
from the wilderness.
Nothing could so convincingly demonstrate the inestimable advantage of
reclaiming the Dismal Swamp as this and other wonderful farms along the
canal, that a few years ago were wilderness, infested with reptiles and
wild beasts.
Before the light had quite gone from the tow-path, a rabbit, and then
another and another, came out of the brushwood and played about quite near
to the horses' heads. With the masculine instinct of destructiveness, a
gun was loaded with evil intent, but wise little bunny had an instinct
too, for he went out of the way of the slaughter.
But while the muzzle was regretting its lost roar, a fat partridge hopped
out of the bush about fifty yards ahead.
"Look! look!" cries the yellow youth, stopping the horse. "Dere's a cock
shot, boss!"
The gun was raised and the little brown hen covered, when a quiet protest
was heard from the black boy.
"'Tain't right to shoot a bird in de mating season!"
But the remonstrance was late, the hammer fell, the explosion followed--
and the partridge, by good luck, escaped across the canal. The enjoyment
of the black boy was as evident as the disappointment of the yellow one.
If anything were needed to make the sportsman ashamed of himself, it was
the timid little "cluck-clucking" of the covey in the grass, alarmed for
the welfare of the absent one. The tameness of the birds at this season
made the offence all the meaner; and the double reproach of the black
boy's eye and the frightened little family in the field had its full
effect.
Soon after, through the gathering gloom, we saw the outline of a large
house to the left of the canal, with outbuildings and white fences, and
other large buildings on the right side of the canal. This was Wallaceton,
where, at Captain Wallace's house, we received a most hospitable welcome.
In a few minutes the canoes were cared for, many willing hands helping,
and we were enjoying an excellent supper. After supper it was hard to
realize, from our refined surroundings, and the gracious hospitality we
were enjoying, that we were within the bounds of, and not very far from
the very heart of the Dismal Swamp. Three gentlemen connected with the
National Geological Survey, Mr. Atkinson, Mr. Towson, and Mr. Kennedy,
were stopping at Captain Wallace's, and they told us much about the swamp
region, which they were then surveying, and of which an accurate map is
soon to be published.
That night we could only see the interior of this charming home; next
morning we witnesed with astonishment the extraordinary wealth, fertility,
beauty, and wonderful cultivation of Captain Wallace's magnificent farm.
Every acre of this land, both east and west of the canal, has been saved
within forty years from the Dismal Swamp. Forty years ago the elder Mr.
Wallace, a man of high intelligence and indomitable spirit, whose immense
farm joins his son's, with his own hands cut down the first tree in the
swamp, which marked the beginning of this estate. He and his son, Capt.
John G. Wallace, have now, in the first order of cultivation, many
thousand acres of land not inferior to the best on the continent.
We were awakened in the morning by a chorus of bird song rivalling that of
the evening before. On looking from our window we saw a field like a
dream--1100 level acres without a fence--in which it appeared that not one
inch was left neglected or unproductive. The splendid area of fertility
was marked in squares of varying color like a map; here the rich dark
brown of ploughed loam; there the green ridges of early potatoes and corn;
yonder a long stretch of clover, and so on until every foot of the fine
field was filled with natural wealth.
This field, called the Dover Farm, lies on the west side of the canal;
that is, it reaches into the very depths of the swamp for nearly a mile
and a half. Its position is between the lake and the canal.
How, then, if Lake Drummond and the canal be higher than the swamp, could
this 1100 acres of land be drained? The answer has in it the demonstration
of the iniquity and stupidity of the canal system. Captain Wallace ran a
deep drain around this Dover Farm, bringing the end of it to the canal;
there he stopped, and waited until the canal was emptied some years ago,
for the purpose of being cleansed from stumps and sand. The indefatigable
farmer took advantage of the dry water-course and dug his culvert under
the bed of the canal, bridging it securely. His drain was then several
miles long, and he continued it until it emptied into the Northwest river,
which runs out of the swamp. Last year the lake being swelled by heavy
rains, the canal company did not, of course, open their locks and let the
water escape; instead, they adopted a lazier, easier, and more ruinous
plan; they raised the banks of the canal, one consequence of which was
that the confined water percolated through the surrounding land, forced
itself under Mr. Wallace's drain, and inundated and destroyed several
hundred acres of his cleared land. Of course, from such an injury he had
no protection.
The energy and intelligence of these two gentlemen, father and son,
working with such surroundings, are remarkable. The elder Mr. Wallace, a
man considerably over 70, spoke with almost enthusiastic earnestness of
the work he had himself done, and the greater work of general reclamation
which is possible in the Dismal Swamp.
"A railroad," he said, "instead of the canal, would open up and enrich
this whole country. If the locks at both ends of the canal were opened,
almost the entire land of the Dismal Swamp could be reclaimed. Or," he
added, looking at the canal, which must have cost him many a bitter
thought, "if this water were only lowered four or five feet the land all
around here could be saved."
After an early breakfast we started up the canal, intending to reach the
Feeder early in the fore-noon, and, if possible, arrive at the lake about
noon. Still the leaky canoe bothered us; but while we were considering how
to make her carry her load, a handsome young farmer, Mr. R. E. B. Stewart,
courteously offered us his boat and man to take our baggage to the Feeder
lock, near the lake. In a few minutes the boat started ahead of us.
The canal above Wallaceton resembled the stretch from Deep Creek to that
place, the only change being that the trees in the swamp become thicker
and taller. The majority of the trees here appeared to be black gum, with
an outer border of poplar, maple, and swamp-oak.
The Feeder is a deep cutting, about 18 feet in width, running at right
angles from the canal to the lake. It is four miles in length, with a lock
about a quarter of a mile from the lake.
The current in the Feeder runs strongly from the lake to the canal. The
banks of the Feeder are thickly covered with canebrake, the bamboos of
great height. On the right, going toward the lake however, the swamp is
more open and has large timber.
The condition of the Feeder was a shocking revelation. There was no raised
bank here, as in the main canal. For miles of its length the water flowed
freely over the banks into the swamp, creating a morass of dreadful
appearance. No living thing could there find footing. Even birds were
rarely seen, although we saw a few of beautiful plumage, one of which is
known to the negroes of the swamp as the red bird. It resembled a flame in
the brilliance of its coloring, as it passed through the shaded light of
the swamp.
In the Feeder we met several lighters, heavily piled with juniper logs, on
their way from the lake to the sawmill. These lighters had each two men,
colored, who poled them from the banks. At times, when the sides of the
Feeder will permit, they walk on a line of logs laid along the mud bank,
pushing the lighter with their poles resting against the breast.
Our passage up the Feeder was against a strong current. It was a steady
and monotonous paddle through dim light, the canebrake and the boughs
reaching over our heads. The air had a dense warmth as though we. were in
a closed room. Outside on the canal, there was a strong breeze with a
decided chill in it; here, we were stifled as if in an oven. And yet, up
to this time we had not seen a mosquito in the swamp; and as for snakes
and other wild creatures, we had almost made up our minds that they were a
tradition or a popular romance.
"How far to the lake?" we asked a magnificent fellow who was poling a
timber skiff down the Feeder. He was a giant in black bronze, large-eyed,
large-browed. large-motioned--a man born to be distinct among his fellows.
He stopped his lighter by holding her against the canes, and he looked
with an ample smile at the canoes. We had to repeat our question, when he
started as if ashamed.
"Beg yo' palidon," he said, with a grace that became him; "I didn't hear
yo', dem boats is so putty. It's 'bout a mile to de lake, What yo' call
dem boats?"
"Canoes."
"Kunnues! nebbah heahd 'bout dem befoah."
We remarked that he looked in good condition, and asked him was the swamp
a wholesome place.
"Yes," he said. He had worked on the lake for seven years. He had come
there from South Carolina, sick with chills, to be cured in the swamp.
"Do people come here to be cured?"
"Oh, yes, sah! Dismal Swamp's de healthiest place in all de worl'. Dere's
nothing like junipa watah to cu' de chills."
"Do you like the swamp?"
"Yes, sah! I like de swamp. I wouldn't wuk nowheres else. I could get moh
wages by going out to wuk on de high land. I get twenty dollars a month
heah; could get thirty dollars out on de bank, but I like to wuk in de old
Dismal best of any."
This was free testimony, and we heard it repeated scores of times by
"swampers" before we left the lake. Interesting in this respect and others
was Ned Boat, a very old colored man, who has lived in the swamp
altogether for seventy-four years. He has never been sick. He is now
employed by Mr. Roper as a counter of logs and marker of time, and earns
forty dollars a month. He says the swamp water will cure almost every
disease. Another man, the blackest man we had ever seen, his skin being
quite as black as ebony, had come from South Carolina five years ago, with
chills and fever, had been cured by the juniper water, and had lived in
the swamp ever since. White folk as well as black added their testimony as
to the extraordinary salubrity of the swamp. The phrase "Going out to the
high land" is the usual expression of the "swamper" for going to the
exterior world. He speaks as if the swamp were in a hollow, instead of
being higher than "the high land." He says, "I came in," and again, "I
went out to the bank;" a phrase that is impressively significant of his
footing in the swamp.
We said good-by to our colored Hercules, whose mighty arms were bare to
the shoulder and his ragged shirt open to the waist. He had on a thick
white cotton cap, without a visor, that looked like a wadded turban. It
became him mightily. In front he had sewed a strip of red cloth, not
across, but upright, and behind he had fastened the long bushy tail of a
squirrel, that hung down his back. "I killed dat fellow last night," he
laughingly said, seeing our eyes fixed on the ornament.
No great tragedian on the stage ever dressed himself so becomingly as this
black Ingomar.
There was no chance harmony here, it was nature's own decoration. He saw
himself in no mirror, except the mirror of the canal. He knew how to dress
better than any belle in Boston or New York. The wave of his large hand as
he said "good-by" was as kindly and as eloquent as if he stood in a lion-
skin cloak on the banks of the Niger, a chief among his own.
We could not help thinking as we left him that this man at least was
properly placed in the Dismal Swamp, where he was as free as were his
fathers in Africa. Like scales from our eyes began to fall the impressions
of "Dred," and all the other dismal stories we had read and heard about
the Dismal Swamp. Every day of our stay on the lake this conviction grew
upon us; the slaves who escaped to the Dismal Swamp in the old time must
have lived happily in their absolute freedom. The negro in the swamp is at
home. He has helped to spread and exaggerate the terrors of the place to
keep it more securely for himself. If I were a slave, in slave time, and
could get to the Dismal Swamp, I should ask no pity from any one.
But all this time we kept laboriously paddling against the strong current,
for the lock ahead, only a quarter of a mile from the lake, was this day
letting pass an unusual volume of water. Every stroke of the paddle now
sent us deeper and deeper into the heart of the swamp. Suddenly, Moseley,
who was ahead, stopped paddling and peered through the matted underbrush.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A cow and a calf! What can they be doing here in the middle of the
swamp?"
There they were, sure enough; a red and white pair. They heard our voices,
stopped chewing, stared a moment, then turned and picked their way into
the jungle.
A few minutes later the lock came in sight, and we saw two men waving
their hats. One was the man in Mr. Stewart's boat with our traps, and the
other was "Abeham" (not Abraham), who was to be our guide, philosopher,
and friend on the lake. Abeham had been sent from Suffolk to meet us by
Mr. Rudolph A. King of Washington, a gentleman deeply interested in the
Dismal Swamp, of whom I shall have more to say by and by.
"What are that cow and calf doing in the swamp?" was our first question.
"Wild cattle, sah," said Abeham.
"Are there wild cattle in the swamp?"
"Yes, hund'eds and hund'eds of wild cattle; I saw lots of 'em dis mawnin'.
Yo' ought to have shot dat calf; we'll want him to-morrow."
This lock at the very lip of the lake keeps the water back to another
height of several feet, so that lock after lock, from first to last, had
backed up the lake to the height of almost twenty-three feet above tide
water.
Never can we forget the view that met our eyes as we were raised to that
last level, and looked along the canal to the lake.
The lockhouse and the whole Feeder were completely overhung with tall
trees. So close was their interlacing over the canal that the view to the
lake was like looking through the barrel of a gun. The air along the dark
and narrow sheet was actually green from the light sifting through the
foliage. We were in the shadow; it was all shadow to the end, but the end
of the view glittered like an immense diamond.
A ball of glorious and unshaded brilliancy lay at the end of the Feeder. A
"talisman's glory" it was, set on the low water and framed in the dense
cypress.
"What is that?" we asked after a long look of bewildered pleasure.
"Dat's de openin' to de lake," said Abeham.
We sat there for an hour. We ate our dinner and smoked a cigar; and the
wonder lessened as the strange glory grew. The radiance of the diamond
became subdued till it had taken the form of a perfect arch, with its
perfect reflection in the water.
We were looking along a dark, straight stream, shaded over like the low
arch of a bridge, until the gun barrel simile was the most likely, and, at
the end or muzzle, the vision was carried across three miles of open and
smooth water flashing to the sun.
Mr. Moseley photographed the scene. It was the first time, in all
probability, that this picture, incomparable of its kind, had ever been
taken by a camera, though Tom Moore surely must have sketched it when he
stood at this same feeder lock eighty-five years ago.
At the request of the good-natured colored boy from Wallaceton we
photographed the lockhouse, including him. He asked, could he have the
picture, and Mr. Moseley promised to send him one.
"Send it," he said, with the importance of a serious child, as he named
his many initials, "to D. J. L. Griffin, care of Abeham."
Then we started down the gun barrel toward the lovely bridge, the
perfection of which remained unbroken to the last. Here was no effort of
landscape art, but the living hand of nature completing its own picture
and putting all art as gently out of question as the mountain does the
mole.
A weirdly beautiful view opened on us as our canoes shot under the outer
leaves of the Feeder's bridge, and we floated at last within the
marvellous ring of the lake of the Dismal Swamp.
Vividly came to our minds the picture in Moore's touching ballad.
Here, we thought, is the very scene, water, wood, and sky, that the poet
saw generations ago. These trees growing out of the dark flood; this
weeping moss hanging from the sad queenliness of the elegant cypress;
these "deadly vines" with their purple trumpet flowers that poison the
very water immto which they pour their tears; these "beds of reed" and
"tangled juniper"; these white roots round the border of the lake, where
glide and coil "the copper snake" and the fearful red-bellied moccasin.
And here let the lapse of timne be forgotten and the association be
renewed. There is no age in art. The song of a true poet is as unrelated
as the song of a bird or a brook. This is my excuse, if it be needed, for
repeating here Moore's ballad of "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written
at Norfolk, in Virginia, in 1808.
"They tell of a young man who lost his mind on the death of the girl he
loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never
afterward heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings that the girl
was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it was supposed he had
wandered into that dreadful wilderness and had died of hunger, or had been
lost in some of its dreadful morasses."--Tradition.
"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true,
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by her fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
Her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree
When the footstep of death is near."
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.
And when on the earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he stirring cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"
He saw the lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface played--
"Welcome!" he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid.
Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he followed the meteor spark,
The wind was high, and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe.
How wonderful was the truth of the poet's vision! A century is as a day,
leaving the picture unchanged. True in romance and reality, Moore's poem
on the "Lake of the Dismal Swamp" is as faithful in its natural history as
in its melody.
It may be interesting here to recall the incidents of the poet's visit to
the lake in 1803. To one man in Norfolk is due special thanks for the
constant attention which of late years has been given to this memorable
visit. Mr. M. Glennan, editor of the Norfolk Virginian, has often agitated
the reclaiming of the Dismal Swamp, making use of Moore's ballad to keep
the popular interest from flagging. Mr. Glennan writes me the following
interesting account of Moore's two visits to Norfolk:--
"In 1803, Tom Moore received the appointment as registrar of the admiralty
court at Bermuda; and in September, 1803, he sailed from Portsmouth, Eng.,
in a ship of war that was taking out Mr. Merry, minister to the United
States. The ship arrived in Norfolk Nov. 7 following, and while Mr. Merry
went to Washington, Moore remained in this city, the guest of Col.
Hamilton, then the British consul, who resided at that time in the
building now the residence of Mr. Copps, on Main Street, opposite
Fenchurch. During his stay here Moore made many friends and delighted the
young ladies of the borough by his skill upon the harpsichord. While in
Norfolk he wrote the famous ballad 'The Lake of the Dismal Swamp.' In
December he started for his destination in Bermuda, on the man-of-war
Driver. He was disappointed in his anticipations as to the Bermudas, and
after he had been there about three weeks he wrote to his parents that 'he
was coming home.' He accordingly appointed a deputy, and in the spring he
took advantage of the sailing of the frigate Boston, to come to New York,
where he shortly arrived. He remained in New York but a short time, when
he again made up his mind to visit Norfolk, arriving here with Capt.
Douglass. During his second stay in Norfolk, it is believed that Moore was
the guest of Mr. William Plume, who resided where the Hospital of St.
Vincent de Paul now stands. Mr. Plume was a native of Ireland, whose real
name was Moran. He had taken a very active part in the rebellion of 1798
in Ireland against the English rule, and with Commodore Barry, 'the father
of the American navy,' and other kindred spirits, had to flee the land. He
settled in Williamsburg, Va., but afterward removed to Norfolk, married a
Miss Elizabeth Hazzard of Princess Anne county, Va. For some reason,
presumed to be the fear of persecution by the English government, he never
revealed that he was the Irish rebel Moran until the time of his death. He
was greatly respected and the soul of society, whose house was always
open. His descendants of today are the Morans, Barrys, and Kings of the
city of Norfolk."
When Moore visited the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, no doubt with the purpose
of putting into ballad form the legend he had discovered in Norfolk, he
naturally went alone in the "dugout" of a negro boatman, so that he might
not be disturbed. He passed up the canal, came through the Feeder and
entered the lake, just as we did, beneath the living arch of cypress. "He
wrote all the time he was in my boat," says the man who brought him to the
lake. This negro boatman, called "Uncle Tony," was a well-known character.
From his own lips the story of the poet's visit has been written down by
Mr. Robert Arnold of Suffolk, Va. Here is Uncle Tony's story:--
"I shall never forgit dat time. One mornin' I war gittin' my skiff reddy
to go to de lake, a mighty nice-lookin' man cum up to me an' sed: 'Ar you
de man dat will carry me to de Lake ob de Dismal Swamp for which I will
pay you 1 pound sterling?' De gentman talked so putty dat I tole him to
git in my skiff an' I wood carry him to de lake. I notice dat he kep
writin' all de way. When I got to de horse camps (a large encampment of
negro wood-cutters), I stopped to git somefin' to eat. He cum outen de
skiff an' ax me what I stop for. I tole him I stop to eat some meat an'
bread. He ax me if I would have a drink. I tuk off my hat an tole him dat
I would be much obleeged to him for it. He fotched a silber jug, wid a
silber cup for a stopper, an' sed: 'My man, dis is Irish whiskey, brung it
all it all de way from home.' He tole me dat his name was Thomas Moore,
and dat he cum fom 'way ober yonder, an' was gwine to de lake to write
'bout a spirit dat is seed dar paddlin' a kunnue. De har 'gin tu rise on
my hed, an' I ax him ef dat wus a fac'. He sed dat he wus tole so in
Norfolk. I shal nebber forgit dat gentman. I fotch him back, an' he gin me
de poun' which war five dollars, an' he lef' for Norfolk, bein' mitey glad
dat I had carried him to de lake. He tole me dat he had trabbled an' seen
sites, but dat he nebber wus so 'stonish befo'; he did not 'spec' to see
at de end ob de kunel sich a putty place, an' dat I wood hear some time
what he was gwine tu say 'bout it."
Our camp lay on the northwest corner of the lake, three miles from the
Feeder's mouth. At the start we struck out to the middle of the lake
before turning north, so that we took in at first glance the whole
wonderful, view. For myself, I longed to lay down my paddle and sit there
motionless until the sun sank and the moon rose, for a dream and
fascination that had drawn me from childhood was now fulfilled and
completed. Only the lake of my fancy was much smaller and gloomier than
the true lake. There is no other sheet of water like this anywhere. No
other so far removed from the turbulence of life, so defamed, while so
beautiful. It fills one with pity and wonder--the utter silence and
loneliness of it. It is a dead sea, but neither bitter nor barren.
I could not help the feeling, that increased as time passed, that this
pure eye of water, ringed by one distinct line of dark trees, no farther
horizon visible, was not on a plain, but on a high mountain. Later on, as
we sailed around the borders of the lake, another delusive thought
persisted in coming. It always seemed that the wooded shore rose abruptly
thirty yards or so back from the water, and that I verily could see the
uplifting of the trees and underbrush. Probably because it was unnatural
that the shore should be just as low or lower than the water surface, the
senses refused to accept it as true.
The first deep impression made on me by the lake was its size. I had
expected to see a sheet not a tenth part as large, and gloomy with the
shadows of its tall, overhanging trees. Instead, from the centre the trees
were a low, dark border on the far horizon.
From the centre, the lake is the very ideal of loneliness and stillness,
strangely emphasized by the solitary wide-winged hawk, tipping on his high
circle. No smaller bird can be seen at this distance in the trees on the
shore--though birds are there, and in rich variety.
Here, for instance, are some of the birds we noted in a few days, many of
them in great numbers: the catbird, robin, swamp canary, wren, sparrow,
mocking-bird, whip-poor-will, red bird (a blaze of plumage), thrush (with
a crown), yellow-hammer, woodpecker, owl (immense fellows), hawk, eagle,
kingfisher, jay, heron, quail, wild turkey, woodcock, buzzard, crow, and
numerous brilliant little birds of many species, whose names we did not
know. In the winter the lake is fairly covered with geese, swans, and all
kinds of duck. The bat, which I believe is not a bird, is at home here.
But crossing the lake that first day we saw only one bird, a hawk of great
size. The water of the lake was deliciously cool in the centre, where the
average depth is about fifteen feet. Again and again we drank the sweet
draught. Looking into it, no mirror could be more perfect in reflection.
The flash of the paddles was brown, not crystal. On a day when the water
broke (and we crossed the lake one day before the rush of a gale), the
brown brandy-light through the lifting waves and the warm ruddiness of the
breakers were singularly beautiful.
The lake is full of fish of many and excellent kinds, though it has never
been fished in the deeper water. The "swampers," who live on the borders,
never fish beyond the line of stumps, which are at farthest a hundred
yards from the shore, so that the fish of the lake are not at all
completely known. The garfish, because he jumps, has been seen sometimes
eight feet long, but no other fish is seen in the deep water. You cannot
see one inch into the lake; it is like looking into a bowl of ink. This
makes it dangerous for light boating, for the snags are numerous, and
though they may not be a nail's breadth under water, they are quite
invisible.
The fish in the lake, great quantities of which we caught, and on which,
indeed, we chiefly lived, are the speckled perch or "Frenchman," a
delicious fish, the raccoon perch, chub (a black bass), yellow perch
(small), flyer, garfish, catfish (very numerous), gaper, blackfish (thirty
inches long), roach and eel. There are plenty of pike in the canals.
The following story has been told me about the strange disappearance of a
fish from the lake: "There was a very numerous fish known there as the
brown perch, which was esteemed as the finest of all fresh-water fish. One
year, about 1866 or 1867, they disappeared and never have been caught
since. It was the year of the great swamp fire, which lasted through a
continuous drought of more than two months. It is supposed that the strong
alkali imparted to the water from the timber and other vegetable ashes
destroyed this fish, for soon after the rainy season had set in, immense
quantities were found floating dead on the edges and surface of the lake."
In the town of Suffolk, on the northwest border of the Dismal Swamp, Mr.
Rudolph A. King of Washington has a large property, which has led him to
consider the advantages of the swamp region as a game preserve. He has
started a project of getting five thousand men to form a game club, paying
about ten dollars each a year, and lease the whole Dismal Swamp. He writes
to me as follows:--
"It is within the reach of men of moderate means, by combination in
sufficient number, at trifling expenditure, so small as scarcely to be
felt, to secure ownership, maintain and extend to a magnitude never
attempted on this continent, with large enough area and attractions for
thousands, 'The Pioneer Shooting Park, Game Preserve, and Health Resort of
America,' exclusively for business men, to provide shooting, fishing, and
outdoor recreative attractions similar to the English and European style,
for those seeking health or pleasure in pursuit of game or fish, canoeing,
yachting, or kindred diversions, such as are becoming more necessary every
year. By these means we could attain more practical results in protection
of forest game, fish, and other natural luxuries of this country, for the
benefit of those concerned, than legislation has been able to reach."
One has only to listen to Mr. King to be converted to his project, which
is certainly one of the straws in the wind that have a significance for
the future of this region.
The lake itself was discovered in 1775, by a Scotchman named Drummond,
after whom it was named. He had followed a deer so far into the swamp,
which was then regarded as impassable, that he lost his way. He wandered
through the dreadful aimless avenues of the morass for three days and
nights, afraid to lie down and sleep on account of the serpents and
panthers. He had almost abandoned hope on the third day, and, the story
goes, was meditating self-destruction to escape the horrors of a lingering
death in the swamp, when he parted the canebrake before him and found
himself on the verge of the wonderful lake. He had discovered the jewel
hidden in the heart of the swamp! The poor fellow thought at first he was
crazy; that this was the wild vision of delirium, till he had waded into
the dark water and drank of it. Then, hope and strength returned. He took
his bearings by the sun and succeeded in reaching his home that night,
with the almost inconceivable tidings of a great lake in the centre of the
Dismal Swamp.
George Washington, in 1763, in his twenty-first year, made a complete
survey of the Dismal Swamp, with profound results. Throughout his life the
secrets of nature he had there discovered were never forgotten; and years
afterward, when the Revolutionary War was over, and he was "the father of
his country," he purchased the swamp, and organized the Dismal Swamp Land
Company, which still exists and continues its ownership.
Washington's original design was not the mere cutting of timber, but the
entire reclamation of the swamp. He had perceived the immediate
possibility of bringing almost its entire area into cultivation. His great
project failed in this its first purpose; not because it was
impracticable, but because the company found that the timber-cutting alone
yielded an unexpected and almost incredible revenue. The reclamation of
the land was gradually given up, and as it was found that by holding and
raising the water the timber could be more easily taken out, the locks
began their work of still further drowning the whole district. Then came
the commercial canal, with power over all the water in the swamp, and
devoid of intelligence and public spirit, and the land of the Dismal Swamp
was doomed.
Washington himself surveyed the swamp for the route of his canals. His
first cutting, running from the northwest corner of the lake in a westerly
direction, ended at what is called the Reed Farm, on the Edenton road,
seven miles from Suffolk. It is still called "Washington's Ditch." It has
for many years been abandoned as a means of travel, a more direct route--
the Jericho Canal--having been made at a later date. The Jericho Canal
leaves the lake at the same lock as "Washington's Ditch," and ends within
two miles of Suffolk, running into the Nansemond river.
I paddled up both these canals from the lake, and more oppressive
surroundings it is hard to conceive. The Jericho Canal is ten miles long
and eighteen feet wide, but the encroaching bamboo jungle reduces this
width by over two feet on each side. The dense canes rise at least fifteen
feet high on both banks, so that it is like canoeing in an unroofed sewer.
To enliven the passage, the moccasins, on sunny days, climb to the tops of
the bamboo canes, and are seen constantly dropping into the water. It is a
common thing to have them drop into the open dugout of the "swamper," out
of which they wriggle without delay. But the thought of a five-foot
venomous snake dropping into a fourteen-foot canoe, with decks forward and
aft, under which he would he sure to dart, and out of which there was no
escape except by returning to the centre of the boat, was a dismal
imagining. To make sure of no such visitor, I kept firing now and then
into the canes ahead.
The water in the Jericho Canal runs into the lake; but at one-third its
length the stream turns and runs the other way, emptying into the
Nansemond river.
This line where the watershed divides is unquestionably the highest
portion of the swamp. It has not been surveyed; but calculating the rise
from the Feeder to the northwest corner of the lake to be two feet, and
three feet for the old lock at the opening of the Jericho Canal, I predict
that the extreme height of the swamp will be from twenty-eight to thirty
feet above tide water.
The condition of the wholly abandoned "Washington's Ditch" is even more
forbidding than that of the Jericho Canal. The heavy trees are crowding
its banks and leaning into it; the bamboos meet across it for long
distances. It is, I think, the most sombre and evil-looking waterway on
the earth, and yet no foot of it but is beautiful. The water moves slowly
toward the lake (any movement is a relief in the gloom and silence, for
even the birds have deserted the place), but after a short distance, as in
the Jericho Canal, the flow changes and goes outward.
Washington had undoubtedly discovered the deepest secret of the Dismal
Swamp, and appreciated its importance. He had read, most probably, the
only description of the swamp in existence in his time, in a manuscript
journal kept by Col. William Byrd of Westover (on the borders of the
swamp), a man of great intelligence, who had surveyed the Dismal Swamp in
1725, at the request of the Governor of Virginia. Col. Byrd's manuscript
is to be seen in the National Library at Washington. After his survey, he
reported to the Governor of Virginia that the Dismal Swamp could be
drained and reclaimed, and a petition was sent to George III.; asking that
a company be formed for that purpose, the company agreeing in advance to
bear all the expenses, to pay themselves by the ownership of the reclaimed
land, which was to remain untaxed for fifty years; and they bound
themselves also to complete the work in ten years.
One hundred and sixty-seven years have passed since then. King George's
answer has not yet been received in Virginia, and the Dismal Swamp remains
undrained and abandoned. Surely this is one of the most remarkable facts
of modern times.
Colonel Byrd, in his journal, describes the dreadful dangers of his
exploring expedition into the Dismal Swamp. "We hoped to gain immortal
reputation," he says, "by being the first of mankind that ventured through
the Dismal Swamp." He started on his exploring expedition in March. He
could not have selected a more unfavorable month, for the swamp was then
drowned with the winter rain almost as completely as it is in the same
month in our own times. The lake is five feet lower in September than in
March. No wonder that after a week's attempt he had only succeeded in
entering to a distance of three miles. His party could find no solid
ground to rest on at night, and their fires went out on the soggy earth.
Colonel Byrd says he succeeded at length in reaching the North Carolina
side of the swamp, and of course he is to be believed. But he must have
skirted the eastern border all the way, for he missed the lake, which was
not discovered until another quarter of a century had passed. Colonel Byrd
based his favorable report to the governor, no doubt, on the fact,
apparent then as now, that the swamp lay between three tidal rivers, the
Elizabeth, the Nansemond, and Pasquotank, and was high above them.
It needed no wizard to see that such a swamp could be drained.
Washington, in 1763, in his own words, entered the Dismal Swamp, and
"encompassed the whole." He camped on the east side of the lake, and
unquestionably considered the problem of its formation, for he was
astonished, and he astonished others by declaring that all the rivers in
the swamp flowed out of it instead of into it.
"The Dismal Swamp," wrote Washington, "is neither a hollow nor a plain,
but a hillside." He had discovered, what measurement has since shown, that
the lake was 23 feet higher than the sea!
Scientists have accounted for the water in the Dismal Swamp, from cursory
observations, by the rainfall, even denying the existence of springs in
the lake. I venture, with much hesitation, to disagree with this
conclusion, believing it to be impossible that the rainfall can account
for the enormous supply of water, not only contained within the swamp, but
which is, and always has been, flowing out of it.
First, it is granted that no more rain falls on the Dismal Swamp than on
any other piece of Virginia 40x30 miles square. Second, it is certain that
it does not draw from the surrounding country, for it is higher than all
its environment.
Yet, out of the Dismal Swamp run no less than nine rivers, some of them
very considerable, and still the lake continues to overflow, and the whole
vast extent of the swamp remains inundated.
These are the rivers that, if traced to their source, will be found to
take their rise in the Dismal Swamp: the south branch of the Elizabeth,
the west branch of the Elizabeth, south branch of the Nansemond, the Deep
Creek, the North River, the Northwest River, the Little River, the
Perquimans, and the Pasquotank.
Granting that the dense foliage of the Dismal Swamp lessens evaporation,
there is still nothing like a proportion between the rainfall and the
water that remains in and flows out of this district.
There is no field in America more deserving of scientific investigation
than the Dismal Swamp. "The first thing" is not known about it--how it was
formed. Fortunately the attention of the National Geological Survey has
now been turned in this direction. A survey of the entire district has
been ordered and begun. Within a year, it is hoped, a perfect map of the
Dismal Swamp, showing its surface, with the accuracy of five-feet
contours, will be published.
"The bed of the lake was formed by a fire that burned the trees and the
peaty earth, making a hollow where the water lodged," says "general
opinion."
But then it must have been a swamp before the fire, or there would have
been no peaty earth to burn, and the rivers must have been flowing out of
it as they do to-day. The fire could not make the rivers, even if it did
make the lake; and if it were originally a swamp, the fire could not burn
deep enough to form the present bed of the lake, which is from 7 to 15
feet in depth. The fires still yearly occurring never burn below two feet,
for at that depth is the percolating water, and it must have been there
always.
The bottom of the lake is composed almost wholly of fine white sand, and
the temperature varies greatly in parts. In our long rubber boots we waded
in the shallow water near the shore in several places, and found this fine
sand bottom. Prof. N. B. Webster, in an interesting article on certain
physical features of the swamp, says,--
"The vast swamp appears to be retained above the level of the adjacent
land in a way similar to the peat mosses of Solway and Sligo, until they
burst and overwhelmed the neighboring country. What known force but that
combination of molecular force known as capillarity can supply and sustain
the waters of the lake and swamp above described?"
It is hard to answer as to the supply, hut it is obvious that the force
that sustains the lake at its present height is not molecular, unless a
lock be a molecule. "The outlets at the canal locks," said old Mr.
Wallace, "are inadequate to let out the overflow, and it has to flood the
land." He was speaking of the pane-like openings in the locks to lower the
water.
But suppose the locks were opened altogether, and left open, what would be
the result?
The middle level of the Dismal Swamp Canal is, or is supposed to be, eight
feet deep. If the middle locks were opened, the lake would be lowered
eight feet, and the whole swamp west of the lake would drain into it,
while that portion to the east would drain into the canal. If there be a
doubt of the consequence, look at some of the wonderful farm lands lying
east of the canal from Deep Creek to South Mills. Miles and miles of
fertility almost incomparable on the surface of the earth. Half a century
ago every foot of this land was Dismal Swamp, forsaken morass, full of
reptiles and wild animals.
"There is some peaty land in the swamp," said Mr. Wallace, "and I don't
know that it could be reduced to cultivation; but there are hundreds of
miles of land as good as this I have reclaimed."
"Would the land burn if it were drained, as some people say?" I asked
Captain Wallace, whose reclaimed land runs within a few miles of the lake.
"No," he answered, smiling at the question; "Why doesn't our Dover Farm
(which lies west of the canal) burn if that be true? The whole surface of
the swamp becomes dry enough to burn in the summer months; but it does not
burn; at least it burns no more than any other closely timbered country."
Another objection offered is that the drainage of the swamp would produce
malaria.
Shame on the pretence! The people who are responsible for the swamp have
not been able to make it malarial in a hundred years of treatment
inductive to malaria. They have drowned it, and rotted it, and cut away
its purifying juniper wood, and still it remains the healthiest portion of
the State of Virginia, if not of the United States.
If I were sick to-morrow of malaria contracted on some New England river,
I should go at once to the Dismal Swamp to be cured. Depend on it, the
tree that can kill malaria in such a morass can drive it out of the human
blood.
What reason is there to believe that malaria would follow if a remedial
and sanative, rather than a destructive and mephitic course were adopted?
But who are "they" who thus have the doing or undoing of the swamp in
their hands?
"They" are the people who devised the policy of the Dismal Swamp Canal and
the Land Company or Timber Company, and all who support their past and
present management. "They," too, are the farmers of the swamp district who
do not agitate for the removal of the obstructions to their prosperity
offered by those persons or corporations. "They," too, are the whole
people of Virginia and North Carolina who tolerate in their States an evil
that the early eighteenth century resolved to remove, and that is a double
discredit to the nineteenth century.
The Dismal Swamp Canal was chartered in 1787 as a public highway, to be
forever free from taxes on condition that it served certain important
purposes, one of which was that "as the said canals, the main canal and
feeder, may be of great utility in affording the means of draining the
sunken lands through which they pass. . . it shall be lawful for the
proprietors of the said adjacent lands to open cross-ditches into the said
canals." I copy from the charter.
This condition has been outrageously abused by the corporation. Instead of
keeping the canal as a means of draining the adjacent lands, the banks
have been raised to store the water till the canal is much higher than the
lands adjoining. If a farmer on the west side wants to drain his land, he
must adopt the heroic course of Captain Wallace and tunnel under the
canal.
On this vital condition, which accounts largely for the immense sums of
public money voted for the canal in Congress and the State Legislatures of
Virginia and North Carolina, the Canal Company has long ago forfeited its
charter. Instead of using the public money for the good of the farmers
owning the swamp lands, it has used it to destroy those lands, with the
view, probably, of eventually buying them at its own price.
But they have overshot the mark, and have ruined their own property more
hopelessly than they have injured the land. They have allowed another
canal to be run almost parallel to theirs (the Chesapeake & Albemarle),
which has diverted all their trade, and which bears large vessels and
steamers. The new canal has a much longer course, with other
disadvantages; but it has beaten its old and pampered rival out of the
field. Only one little steamer plies on the Dismal Swamp Canal, and even
this must disappear as soon as a necessary railroad is run through the
eastern swamp region.
But let us return to our canoes and recall some of the pictures of the
lake and swamp.
"Abeham," said Moseley, on our first afternoon at the lake, "put some bait
in my boat; I am going to fish till supper time."
And he goes one way from the camp in his canoe with his rod and his gun,
while I go another out on the lake. The camp is a rude frame house, with a
few bed places or "bunks" in it, built on the edge of the lake by Captain
Busby of Suffolk, probably to induce sportsmen and fishermen to visit the
place. Instead of pitching our tent in a snake country, this safe and dry
shelter is most gratefully accepted. Contrary to our expectations, the
nights were quite cold, and I had reason to be thankful that I had brought
with me a large raw silk blanket (one of those made by George S. Brown of
Boston, whose excellent goods ought to be known to all who are fond of
athletics and outing).
Our camping ground had associations, too, that are worth mentioning. Over
thirty years ago (in 1855), an attempt was made by some enterprising men
of Suffolk to open the beauties of the lake to the outer world. It was a
worthy project, but it began at the wrong end; the beginning ought to have
opened the eyes of the outer world to the beauties of the lake. Colonel
Hollidway and others of Suffolk built a large hotel here in the swamp,
near where our camp stood. "There were accommodations for one hundred and
fifty persons," we read in a Suffolk man's letter, "and a band of music
was kept continuously playing." Is this a true story? we ask ourselves,
standing on the very site, where not a vestige of hotel remains. To whom
did the band play continuously? If people wanted to hear a band why did
they come here for it? What business had a band here, anyway? How did the
guests reach the lake? Through the Jericho Canal in a lighter, under the
snake-fruited bamboo? What a most singular vein of questions we open,
thinking of this vanished hotel with its incomprehensible band, "playing
continuously!"
"Where did this hotel stand?" we ask Abeham.
"Out dere in de lake, at dat black stump. Dat part of hotel. Dat's all
dere's lef'. Lake cover'd it all up."
The stump was two hundred yards out in the lake. This bears out the words
of Mr. R. A. King that "the lake has widened on the west side, by washing
of the waves, over two hundred yards since 1857."
We left Abeham to cook a supper of fish which he had caught while waiting
for us in the Feeder. Your southern darky is a natural fisherman. Like a
thrifty housewife who takes out her knitting between-whiles, he will bait
a hook and fish while he is "doin' nuffin'." And what a picture of
contentment he is while fishing! Look at Abeham, here, just waiting while
we have gone up a "gum road,"--for we tried faithfully to explore all the
avenues, wet and dry, leading into the swamp, on our way round the lake.
The southern negro is the freest man in civilization, as he ought to be,
for Heaven knows he has had enough of bondage. He is striking the balance
now. He works just when he chooses, and he loafs when he chooses. He is
not only politically, but socially, free. He has no ambitions, no
pretensions, and hardly any responsibilities. He is the sugary element in
the grinding sand of our civilization. Lazy? Why shouldn't he be lazy if
it seems best to him? Suppose he begins to dig and scrape and grow thrifty
and hard and mean as progress and Society make us? Suppose he learns to
sell with light weights, and lend at usury, to live above his income, not
because he wants to, but because Mrs. Cuffee in the next shanty gave a
party, and Mrs. Abeham across the way has set up a mule carriage, and his
wife and family must do as much as they? Will he be a happier or a better
man by this way of living than he is now with his old hat and his cheery
smile and his pleasant manners and his little niggers singing and laughing
with their mother in the humble but sufficient cabin?
Not he; he is choosing the wiser and happier way. Let him go fishing while
he may. He has a right to a holiday for at least two whole generations. If
the white folks grumble at their work left undone, let them go and do it
themselves. They made him do it long enough. Now, let him work just when
he likes, or not at all, if he likes.
Keep on, Abeham, just as you are. Have a rest. Your clothes are good
enough, and you can hunt for food any time. Civilization will catch you
and tame you and dress you and educate you, and make you a provident,
careworn, dependent, miserable, compromising, respectable element of
society soon enough.
But was that a signal Moseley made to me? Yes, a nervous, quick wave of
the hand that says, "Come here! Come here at once!"
I join him in a dozen strokes of the paddle. He is excited.
"Quiet, now," he says, being most unquiet; "do you see that tall gum tree
on the very edge of the water a quarter of a mile away?"
"Yes."
"An eagle, a bald-headed eagle, do you hear? has just lighted in the top
of that tree. We must have him. We will get as near as we can and start
him up. If I miss him, you make sure of him."
We proceeded quietly toward the tree. Abeham, watching us, and scenting
sport, had joined us. When within a hundred yards of the tree we saw the
great bird standing on a high bough, a tall, gaunt, black body, with white
head and tail. The intervening branches made it a risky shot, but when we
had got fairly within range Moseley fired, and down came the bird head-
first, as if plunging into the lake.
There was a fallen tree growing beneath, and he was caught in its branches
about ten feet from the water. He hung heavily, his great curved yellow
beak on his breast, his eyes closed, and his enormous talons extended
helplessly. He seemed to be quite dead.
"Get him down, Abeham," said Moseley.
Abeham pushed his boat under the branches and stood up, reaching his hand
toward the bird. Next moment he shrank back in open-mouthed terror, with
his eyes fixed on the eagle, and actually fell into the seat at the end of
his punt.
What a change had come over the wounded creature! The dying king had
arisen in his harness. He had rallied for a last stroke as his enemies
closed upon him. The head that was drooping a moment ago was raised with
infinite pride and defiance, and the neck stiffened with wrath. The eyes
glared with piercing anger at the foe that dared to touch him; the massive
yellow legs were drawn up to strike, and the talons opened and shut with
ferocious passion.
This was the dread vision that had terrified Abeham, and no wonder. The
bird at that moment could have torn him limb from limb.
But it was only a flash, only the agonized effort of despair and death.
Next moment a gray film spread over the fierce eye, the yellow beak
dropped on the breast, and the legs reached downward pitifully and found
no footing. Then, once more making us start in our boats, he rallied with
raised head, gave a wild look around, and with a desperate struggle raised
himself from the branches, and dashed toward the low bank twenty feet
away. He alighted on the ground, and stood there with his head lowered and
pushed into a dark angle of the bank, with his back to his enemies. There
could hardly be a doubt that it was a deliberate preparation for death,
not an effort to escape. He had seen his enemies close beside him, and he
knew he was in full sight. A proud savage, badly wounded, in the power of
merciless foes, would have done precisely what this eagle did.
Next moment another gun flamed, and he fell backward, dead. He was a noble
specimen of the bald-headed eagle--the national bird. This is the strong-
winged one that, Audubon says, "can ascend until it disappears from view
without any apparent motion of the wings or tail, and from the greatest
height descends with a rapidity which cannot be followed by the eye."
"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."
Who said that the bald eagle was a coward? Audubon, I am sorry to see,
believes the aspersion. Benjamin Franklin regretted that the bird was
taken as the national emblem, because it was said to be mean, ungenerous,
pusillanimous; that he would not fight a dunghill cock in the same cage.
No, perhaps he cannot fight in a cage; such a bird as this was not built
to fight in a cage. But whoever thinks the bald eagle a coward had better
see one die. At the last moment of life, at least, no nation need ever
seek for mightier dignity or courage than his. Woe be to that power that
ever meets the look of a nation preparing for the death-grip as we beheld
that of this majestic bird.
He was awfully solemn and stern, even as he lay dead in the canoe. I never
saw a head, human or animal, with such tremendous lines. The long, curved
bone of the skull over the deep-set eye gave an expression of profound
suffering and power. In one view he seemed to be very old and gray, and
reminded one of the loneliness and kingliness of Lear; but the general
suggestion, not of the beak, but of the side brow and sunken eye, was of
the head of Daniel Webster.
We hung him on a stump till morning, till we could send him by canal to
Suffolk to have his skin preserved. He was, as all great birds and beasts
are said to be, covered with foul parasites, that must have made his life
a torment, and that probably deepened the patient and enduring lines of
his head. These vile things hurried from the dead king they had feasted on
while his blood was warm; and in the morning, when we took his body away,
we saw them clinging hopefully to the sun-warmed stump. "Long live the
king!" one fancies their sycophantic word, as they kissed the senseless
edges of the heated bark. For three whole days some of them hung to the
place, through dew and rain, till a drenching night washed them into
perdition.
So it is always when a great man dies. He must have his parasites in life,
and it is a cold world for the vermin when he is gone.
What more about the swamp? Snakes? I wish I could close without saying a
word defamatory of the poor, maltreated swamp. But one thing is true: it
is no more to be blamed for its vermin than the eagle. In fair hands the
swamp would purify itself and be as wholesome in its life as in its air
and water.
"Pity 'tis, 'tis true." We have told of the birds and flowers and other
lovely features of this strange region. Now we must go down into the
recesses of its sins and let them see the day.
Booted to the thigh, armed with knife and gun, is the only safe way to
enter the canebrake, or, indeed, to depart in any way from the open spaces
of the swamp. During our exploring we did not see bear or panther or
wildcat; but whoever leaves the beaten ways of the swamp must be prepared
to meet these inhabitants.
For three days, with a cool wind and nightly rain, with the exception of
one large king-snake which we killed on a "gum road," we had seen nothing
more noxious than a blue lizard with a red head, a harmless and friendly
little fellow who seems to have no fear of man, for he will go on eating
his invisible food and glancing up in your face in a most amusing and
taking way. But the shape of the creature is against it, and the color of
his head, which is exactly the hue of the moccasin's belly. When Moseley
woke up from a doze one wet afternoon, and found one of these lizards (the
negroes call them scorpions) on his pillow, still eating invisible food
and smacking his lips with a friendly glance, it was well the reptile
didn't understand American, or he might have been offended.
Our first snake was killed in this way: On our second day, while passing
up a "gum road," we came upon a large dark-skinned snake lazily coiled on
a sunny log. Having killed him by striking him with a heavy cane, we were
afterward told by Abeham that it was a harmless king-snake, and that,
moreover, it spent its time destroying the poisonous snakes in the swamp,
which it does by crushing them.
On the morning of the fourth day--and what a day that was, with a copper
cover on it, and a crater underneath--sweltering, we woke up, and both had
the same thought--a swim. "Jim," a very interesting colored "boy" from a
neighboring "swampers'" camp, was outside, and he stared aghast at our
preparations.
"No, no, don't do dat!" he said earnestly.
"Why not?"
"Moccasins!" with a grave head-shake.
We did not jump in; we contented ourselves with a bath in the boat. But we
laughed at "Jim," and sat down to breakfast in the open air. In a few
minutes we stopped laughing.
"What is that swimming out there?" asked Moseley, pointing to a slight
dark streak about twenty yards out in the lake.
"A moccasin!" cried Abeham, getting on his feet excitedly. Abeham was used
to snakes, but terribly afraid of them. "Shoot him!"
We shot him; slight and short as he looked swimming, he was four feet
seven inches in length. In a minute another--his mate probably--swam past
and was killed, and was exactly the same length.
The moccasin swims with its head and about fourteen inches of its back
over the water. The head is very small for the thickness and length of the
snake. It swims rapidly with a wavy motion. It is dark on the back, with a
violently red belly, like inflamed scales, from the loose skin of the
under jaw to the tail. Most of those we saw (and after that day we ceased
to count them) were of an average length of about four and a half to five
feet, thick as a man's arm, and repulsively fat. The prevailing suggestion
of the creatures when you kill them is fatness.
All the snakes of the Dismal Swamp are shy and timid. Very rarely do they
bite, and then only when driven by fear. The largest snake in the swamp is
the king-snake, which grows to be ten feet in length. The rattle-snake is
fortunately rare in the swamp. It is mostly seen near the Feeder, and is
the diamond or water rattle-snake, the largest and most sullenly ferocious
of its dread family. It has a brown back, and a dirty yellowish belly. A
"swamper" said he had seen one this year that was eight feet long.
The most dangerous snake in the swamp is one of the smallest, called the
poplar snake. He is about twelve inches in length, green in color, like
that of the poplar tree in which he lives. We escaped him most
fortunately, for before we heard of him we had deflowered many poplars of
their beautiful blossoms. This snake is a direful pest; from his size and
color he is not easily seen; and his poison is said to resemble the rattle-
snake's.
The water moccasin is a venomous snake, and it is surprising, considering
his countless presence in the swamp, that so few people are bitten. This
reptile literally infests all quarters of the swamp. Other snakes, more or
less numerous, are the black snake (sometimes nine feet long), the horned
snake, and the jointed snake. Abeham and Jim said that they had often
killed this latter questionable reptile, and that it had "broken into
pieces about two and a half inches long."
In case of snake bites the unvarying practice of the "swampers,, is to
bind the limb above the wound tightly, twisting a stick in the ligature,
then suck the wound thoroughly, and afterward drink copiously of whiskey.
They say that this treatment invariably cures all bites in the swamp,
excepting the rattler's. But we only met three or four persons who had
known of actual snake bites.
One quality of the moccasin is interesting and worthy of record, his
curiosity. These snakes escape rapidly on the approach of a man, but will
often return to the place they left to take a look at him. We had a
singular instance of this inquisitiveness. One day, on our way round the
lake, we came to a deserted "gum road," from which the workers had
departed years ago. Mr. Moseley remained at the landing to take a
photograph, and I went slowly up the "gum road," hoping to shoot some
squirrels. About a hundred yards up the road I came to the rotten old log
hut of the "swampers," and there on a heap of bare ashes that still
remained in the midst of the grass, lay in loose coils a long, dark snake,
which I thought, from his similarity of color to that we had killed some
days before, was a king-snake. I resolved to let the benevolent creature
go free. He raised his head and looked at me, perhaps for a second, and
then, with an easy and graceful slowness, glided into the canebrake. I
passed up the road, and was joined by Mr. Moseley and Abeham. On our
return I was telling them of the snake, and when we came to the place, all
speaking loudly and laughing, I said: "That heap is where the snake lay,"
and, behold, there he was again, in the same place. He was not ten feet
from where we stood. He had concealed his long body behind some leaves and
earth, and had placed his head cunningly, as he thought, on the top of the
ash heap, where it very closely resembled a dark creeper leaf.. He was
evidently prepared for a good look at the intruders. He made no motion as
we stood looking at him and talking about him, but stared at us
unwinkingly. We were amused at his audacity, and went on calling each
other's attention to his method of concealment, and his evident purpose of
observation, all the while thinking it was a king-snake. At last Abeham
went to stir him up, to see how long he was, when the snake slowly lifted
its head, and again Abeham retired in dismay, crying out: "It's a
moccasin! Shoot him!" We killed him, and found him to be an unusually
large moccasin, not quite five feet long, but very thick and heavy.
Strange as it may appear, the chief drawbacks of the Dismal Swamp are not
its serpents, or bears, or other formidable wild creatures, but its flies,
most pestilent of which are the yellow fly, before which for six weeks in
July and August even the colored "swampers" are forced to abandon the "gum
roads." The yellow fly raises a burning blister with every bite; and,
helped by the "red-horse mosquito," gnats and gallinippers, they can, it
is said, kill a mule.
The largest wild animal (except cattle) found in the Dismal Swamp is the
black bear. Captain Wallace killed thirty on his farm last winter (by
spring guns set around his cornfields), one of which weighed 850 pounds;
and "Jim" the friendly "swamper" said he had counted twenty-seven bears
crossing a "gum road" one morning on their way to a field on the Suffolk
side of the swamp. There are also hog bear (from the size), Seneca bear
(white breast), panther, wildcat (numerous and large, about three times
the size of the ordinary cat), deer (quite numerous, and some with noble
antlers), coon, opossum, rabbit, fox, squirrel, otter, weasel, and
muskrat.
One word more about the snakes. One night--(the early summer nights are
cool in the swamp) we had an immense fire outside the hut, the logs, five
or six feet long, standing on end and sending up a roaring flame. Several
"swampers," who had come to sit at our fire and chat, began fishing for
catfish, which are attracted by a light. They were pulling them in
briskly, and one pulled in a large eel, over two feet in length and very
thick. They instantly beheaded him and pulled his skin off, leaving the
flayed body to wriggle about in the dust. It was horribly like a snake,
and we had to tell Abeham to throw it into the water. The circle had drawn
closer to the kindly flame, when one said, pointing to a dark, round
object about three yards from the fire: "Is that another eel?"
Every eye was fastened on it, and no one spoke, but Abeham quietly went
for a gun, and without a word shot the intruder. It was a moccasin that
had come out of the canebrake and coiled himself to enjoy the fire.
One day Moseley was out on the lake fishing, and I was paddling quietly
under the trees on the bank, hoping to shoot a red-bird or a crowned
thrush for specimens. I heard Moseley hail me, and answered, but then he
went on in a very. queer way talking with some one in the swamp beyond me.
At last I went out to him and found that he had discovered an echo of
wonderful clearness, and which was otherwise interesting. Near the shore I
had not heard it, but a quarter of a mile out it was startlingly distinct.
The sound was quite unlike the hard resonance thrown back from cliff,
mountain, or cave. It smacked of the swamp in a manner hard to describe.
The repetition was largely magnified, though it seemed to be thrown to a
distance, and to come from a great height, as if it had bounded up from
the wide field of the swamp. The sound had an elastic click about it, like
the remote stroke of a woodman's axe. It was the echo from a wood,
unmistakably, and not from a wall.
Strange to say, the best word to throw to an echo is its own name. It
loves to fling it back unclipped and sudden. Divide the syllables,
stopping at the "ech," and it seems to wait impatiently for the "o." We
had a long conversation with it, and wondered whether it resided in the
dense canebrake and higher foliage that lined the water front, or
rebounded upward like a boy's ball that had fallen on the vast concavity
of the tree tops.
Abeham said he had never heard of the echo before, and he listened with
all his ears, laughing consumedly when the echo shouted defiance; but he
would not try it, from shyness as we thought.
We spent the days exploring lake and swamp, returning to camp tired at
night, but repaid by our experience. We were seeing the lake and swamp as
no one can ever see them without such boats as ours. A heavy boat, with
oars, cannot pass through the ditches and canals, nor even coast the lake
inside the line of stumps. The negro "dugout" is available for lake and
canal, but it is heavy and slow, and it cannot face the lake in rough
water and high wind. The birch-bark canoe would get snagged at every
length. The only safe and pleasant boat for the swamp is the cedar canoe,
and an open one is better than a decked one, to let the moccasins wriggle
out if they happen to fall in while you are passing through the narrow
canals.
During our passage round the lake we came to very many old and new "gum
roads" running into the swamp. We followed these until we saw the nature
of each. Some had been deserted apparently scores of years ago, and it was
a sorry sight to see the effect of the ruthless timber-cutting which is
going on to-day as it was 50 or 100 years ago. No intelligent forestry has
ever been applied to the swamp; the selection of the trees has been wholly
left to ignorant men. Where whole groves of juniper or cypress were cut
down, the cleared land was left to grow up in jungle, and the jungle that
follows this cutting is an impenetrable canebrake, through which an
elephant could not force his way for a mile. During these wanderings Mr.
Moseley never lost an opportunity of capturing a characteristic sketch or
photograph, and his pictures faithfully preserve many of the striking
features of the swamp.
The beauty and profusion of the vegetation seen from these "gum roads" is
indescribable. The greens of the underwood are the intensest hues of
nature; the ferns dripping with moisture, the yellow jessamine climbing
the great trees, the familiar Virginia creeper rioting in its leaps and
lovely hangings. Again and again, not knowing, we were tempted to gather
the attractive trumpets of the poisonous oakvine, that is so virulent that
to bathe in water in which it hangs will blister and corrupt the flesh.
This is Moore's "deadly vine," that
"doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!"
"There are two things I should like to know," said Moseley, during our
last day on the lake, "and one is what that fellow in the Norfolk tug
meant by advising us to keep our pistols handy? Surely there could be no
men more good-natured and lawful than these poor fellows who work in the
swamp."
This was emphatically true. Considering the wild life the "swampers" lead,
they are the most harmless, amiable, and, I should say, innocent men I
have ever met. Their conversation with us and among themselves was about
as light, cheerful, and curious as that of children. They carry no
weapons; they are sober, play-loving, and obliging. Only on one colored
man in the swamp did we see anything like a weapon, and that was a razor,
ostentatiously carried in his waistcoat pocket by a jaunty mulatto; but he
had been a great traveller, he said, and he had only come into the swamp
to see some friend among the juniper-cutters, though perhaps he had some
other reason for a little retirement from society. The swamp is a fine
place for a retreat.
"What is the other thing you are in doubt about?" I asked Moseley.
"The wild cattle. We have seen only that red and white cow and calf,
though they say they are numerous. I can't believe that that tame-looking
cow was wild."
"But what business would a tame cow have in the depths of the swamp, and
how could she get home if she had a home to go to?"
He admitted that it was hard to find a domestic reason for the cow being
in the swamp, but still he doubted. We were passing at the time through a
narrow and dark waterway, where the sheets of deep water under the trees
lay like black glass. We came to a dry bank in the morass, and, standing
there, quietly and proudly looking at us as we approached, was a red bull
about three years old. We stopped paddling and returned the stare. He
stood beside our only passage, a narrow one. Abeham was behind, and he
shouted, "Look out, dere; dat wild bull dang'ous!"
We shouted at him, but he paid no heed. He was a superb creature, dark red
all over, round-headed and very small. We broke branches and waved them
and shouted, at a distance from him of about twenty yards. Not an eye
winked, but his tail gave one or two quiet waves from side to side. Abeham
wanted us to load a rifle, and kill him; but this would be wanton, as we
were to leave the swamp the next day. Still we must pass, and he would not
move. He paid no attention to a gun pointed at him. The poor fellow was
only half wild, one could not help thinking; the hereditary taint of human
association was in his blood. Probably his grandfather had fed in a fenced
field, and had submitted to be "driven home" by a bare-footed boy.
At last a shot fired into the canebrake close to him gave him a shock. He
looked at the canes where the small shot rushed, and then turned and
trotted into the swamp.
That night we decided to leave the lake next day, passing through the
Feeder and keeping along the main canal until we reached the Pasquotank
river in North Carolina.
It rained in torrents in the early part of the night, and then cleared up,
and the full moon shone on the lake. It was a scene of marvellous beauty,
which color alone, not words, could reproduce. The lake was smooth, and
incredibly black, the water retaining absolutely no light, and only
appearing to be liquid by surface shining. The moon's reflection, on the
contrary, was whiter than it would be on common water, and it crossed the
lake like the avenue to a king's palace. It was five o'clock in the
morning, and the eastern sky was paling the moon, when we stood on the
edge of the lake, with "A health to thee, Tom Moore!" and then we broke
camp.
As our canoes shot out on the lake and we looked back on the camp, we knew
that the days and nights spent there could never be forgotten.
We crossed the lake in the teeth of a stiff breeze that made the beautiful
brown waves leap at us in play, as if to stay our going. It was still
early morning when we reached the mouth of the Feeder, and took our last
look at the lake, in memory of which Moseley carried the scene off in his
camera.
This last look at the lake, between the trees, showed us a tall cypress
with immense roots standing up in the deep water, like a suffering
mythological tree, condemned and metamorphosed for offending the gods.
Then we set our faces toward the outer world, or toward "the bank," as our
friends "the swampers" would say, and a lovely passage we had, running
with the swift current through the shadowy Feeder. We stopped only twice
on our way, once to capture a terrapin that was sunning himself on a log,
and again to fire at a snake in the reeds, a shot which was admirably
captured with an instantaneous photograph. Reaching the canal, we turned
southward toward North Carolina, and at two o'clock reached a station on
the canal where there was a store kept by a little man who was as
consequential and disobliging as it only lies in the power of a rural
magnate to be. Though we had breakfasted early and not very well, we had
to proceed hungry on our way.
The locks we came to now lowered us step by step, until at last, having
passed South Mills, the largest village on the canal, we were dropped into
the tide-water of the Pasquotank river.
After a long and winding way between densely wooded banks, the lonely
river gradually widening into a large sheet, we ran after nightfall under
a railroad bridge, and saw the lights of a town, or, rather, one solitary
lantern set on a wharf, and knew we had reached Elizabeth City, N. C.
We could only see that the main street was shaded with noble elm trees, as
we went to the Albemarle Hotel; and it is pleasant to record here that we
had a supper and breakfast in this little-heard-of place that would have
done credit to Delmonico's for material, cooking, and service.
Next morning we had a look at the city, and a sad one. This was a noted
seat of culture, wealth, and fashion before the war, the dread marks of
which were still plainly seen on every hand. The main street, that was a
pride to the State thirty years ago, was burned by the Confederates
themselves to save it from the "invaders." Large squares of house lots are
vacant still, grass-grown, and ruin-covered, with here and there a poor,
shaky-looking store cheek by jowl with a board shanty filled with negro
children.
In walking through this city one could not help moralizing on the awful
affliction that befalls a defeated country. Here are the men, middle-aged
and still young, who remember the proud and gracious old times, and who
are doomed forever to contrast them with the sordid and compromising
efforts of hopelessly broken fortunes. Over all the country round about
Elizabeth City the fierce waves of war had rolled, leaving a fearful mark.
We saw noble houses, once filled with beauty and luxury, now crowded with
colored working people; gardens in which the roses, reverting to single-
petalled wildness, struggled for sunlight under burdened clothes-lines.
But we saw one house to remember with pleasure, with a rose garden in
front of it like a picture from sensuous Pompeii; and then we came away,
thinking that Elizabeth City might, indeed, once more awake to proud and
prosperous days. But, said the thought, it will take more than a
generation for the revival, and the people of the old glory shall not be
those of the new. The wealth that was based on slavery was a bubble, and
the pride that went with it was a poison for the very earth. God's hand is
heavy when the scales come to be balanced. Expiation and atonement are
always bitter, however they may be sweetened by the spirit of
renunciation. We intended to return to Norfolk by the Chesapeake &
Albemarle Canal, the flourishing water-way, crowded with ships, which
ought to be only a young rival of the Dismal Swamp Canal, for the latter
had all the natural advantages, and also controlled the field.
But the Chesapeake & Albemarle Company had an inferior route, plus
intelligence, and the consequence is that it is crowded with commerce,
while the Dismal Swamp Canal is traversed by one poor little steamer, the
Thomas Newton, that looks like the working model of Fulton's first
steamship.
There was a storm raging along the coast, and we could not face bad
weather outside in our canoes to get to the other canal, so we shipped our
effects on the Thomas Newton to return on our tracks along the whole
course of the Dismal Swamp Canal.
The Dismal Swamp could be drained and reclaimed, and a property of very
large value would be added to the States of Virginia and North Carolina.
While in process of reclamation, and perhaps afterward, the present canals
could be retained to get out the timber, which is enormously valuable; but
the locks making the central or higher level could be abolished. This
would lower the canal and the lake about seven feet. It would be
comparatively inexpensive to dredge this level down to the outer levels.
A fall of seven feet in the lake would reduce it perhaps half a mile,
leaving all round it a beach of white sand of exquisite fineness. This
would at once purify it from the water snakes that make its banks hideous.
The surrounding swamp would drain into the lake, the Feeder and the
canals, leaving their banks dry. A road could easily be made on one side,
and a clearing on the other, along all these canals, sweeping away
moccasins and other water reptiles.
The reduction of the water could be made profitable to the owners in
another way. The city of Norfolk needs a water supply, and here is the
best water in the country at its very door. If the color of the water be
objectionable it could be passed through a filter and made crystal, though
it is possible that in the change it might lose its anti-malarial quality.
A narrow-gauge railroad ought to be run from Portsmouth to South Mills.
(Since writing this the programme of the Portsmouth & South Mills.
railroad has been sent to me, and the promoters have paid me the
compliment of inserting as a preface part of my report of the Dismal
Swamp. This railroad will complete the ruin of the canal as a commercial
way, and will leave it valueless except as a drain.)
And now I have told the story of the Dismal Swamp as two men saw it who
had no other interest than that of chance voyagers through the wilderness.
I have tried to convey to others exactly the impressions left on my mind,
often using restraint in order not to overstate the good or evil qualities
of the Dismal Swamp.
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