Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1920 — FEW ENTER “DISMAL SWAMP” [ARTICLE]

FEW ENTER “DISMAL SWAMP”

Forbidding Region In Virginia and North Carolina Extends No Hoe* pitable Hand to Visitors. The name “Dioma) Swamp" la a byword everywhere, and a legend has grown up around It of a dreary, boggy, unknown region of snakes and dark, damp thickets, where runaway slaves fled for refuge. This region is btit little better known today than it was when George Washington himself laid out a route through it ■The swamp is old historically. The first settlers at Norfolk and the region round about knew of it as a wild, impassable bit of country full of game and of valuable timber—cypress, so good for making shingles; juniper, black gum and beech. In 1728 Col. Byrd, while trying to establish the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, rap a survey across it; working with the greatest difficulty and making only a mile a day through the thick growth. He It was who named It the Dismal swamp. , Later surveys and government maps show that the wilderness contains about 800 square miles of wood and water lying in a tract twenty miles wide and forty-five long, and extending twenty mile» into Virginia and twentyfive Into North Carolina. The soil IS a sort of rich black vegetable mould, dry and caky at some seasons, and saturated with water at .others. The whole region is like a huge sponge, alternately dry and wet, and as the'swamp level, ctAlously enough, Is twenty’feet above tidewater, it is the Source of many rivers and streams. There are deer in the woods, but It is the wild cattle that give the best sport. The ancestors of these “reedfed” cattle, as they are called, strayed in from the fields and took up their abode in the swamp. The result is a race of small, active, wild cattle, the flesh bf which is a delicious combination of the qualities of wild game and tame animals., There is a chance that before many years the greater part of the swamp will be redeemed from its present wildness into civilized farm land, but it will be many years before the bear and wild cattle and moccasin snakes disappear from their’refuges, and before the rare plants and birds that still draw botanists and ornithologists from all parts of the country will be found only in, museum show cases.