Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1884 — The Dismal Swamp. [ARTICLE]

The Dismal Swamp.

This little-visited district, on the borders of Virginia and North Carolina, derives most of its celebrity from the ballad written by Tom Moore at Norfolk on a supposed legend of a distracted lover who fancied that his lost mistress had gone to the Dismal Swamp, and paddled her white canoe over the waters of Lake Drummond. When Mr. Wirt laid out the boundary line of the State ho described the swamp as forty miles wide and twenty broad, with a black deep soil, covered by a stupendous forest of juniper and cypress trees, while below was a thick entangled undergrowth of reeds, woodbine, grapevines, mosses, and creepers interlaced and complicated. Bnt man has wrought great changes since this account was given. The Dismal Swamp Canal, connecting the Elizabeth and Pasquotank rivers, now traverses the district for twenty miles, while another runs from Lake Drummond to the Nansemond River. The first attempt to drain the swamp was mqde by a company organized by General Washington after tho close of the Revolutionary War; bnt although the original design of reclaiming the land was never carried out, the land company realized enormous profits from the lumber it took out. Immense quantities of staves, shingles, and the like have been sent from the thick dark groves, and to-day most as the valuable gum, juniper, cypress, and white pine has been cut. The undergrowth is varied and luxuriant ; reeds prevail everywhere, and, to the south form a sea of verdure. The soil is deep and soft, and large quantities of fallen trunks have been taken from beneath the surface, where they have been preserved by the antiseptic qualities of the water. The water of Lake Drummond and the swamp in general is dark colored like coffee, but is pleasant to the taste,' and will keep pure for a long time. nature of the soil renders road-making a difficult task, and the 'first railroad engineer almost despaired of success. The mule roads are simply logs laid side by side, over which the shingle-carts pass. The swamp is intersected by some ridges elevated above the watery level which constitutes the greater part of the region, and on them the. harder kinds of timber grow. These portions of the swamp are, perhaps, susceptible of being reclaimed. As to the rest, numerous schemes since that of Washington have been proposed for making it available for cultivation, and for using the upper bog surface for fuel resembling the peat so < commonly cut from the bogs of Ireland and of Scotland. About six months ago there \were some notices published of anew enterprise looking to the reclamation of this enormous tract of land. The field is a large one, and modern appliances for draining large areas of water-saturated land have been so perfected that ii is probable that success will, to a certain extent, crown the efforts of the society making tkeattempt— Harper's Weekly. The marval is that, considering their miserably superficial education, which fits them for nothing in this world or the next, women stand on so high' a. plane as they now do. It Only shows what mother wit has: dona for them. No pore, noble womanhood can come from the present order of society.

There can be foundnogrand men without grand mothers. Therefore, this Republic had better look to its women. Beauty and style and veneered accomplishments do not make a woman.— Kate Field.