Bristol news. [volume] (Bristol, Va. & Tenn.) 1867-189?, 1869-10-15

aud his description ends with the statement
that II Is an ugly place, of which he knows
little and FISHES he knew less, as he has on
some ccSsion mired in 1t waist deep, duck
sht DING In iis margin.
Bong ago, In the earliest history OF the
country, an adventurous hunter pressed
through to the centre OF this wilderness
and discovered vast sheet Of water lying
within Its mysterious depth. The water
took the hunters name since when Lake
Drvmmond has become known to geograph-
ical and other fame. In 1904. the Irish
Tom hoors-----the diminutive poetic,
slump up and kiss me Tom," Of the ladies'
visited Norfolk, and heard there the ira
ditional stories of young man who, on the
death Of the girl he loved, lost bis reason.
10 the lovers rawlings. he often said she
was not dead, but gone tn the Dismal
Swamp. He suddenly dis 'ppeared, aud
his friends never afterwards heard OF him,
aud IL was surmised that he had wandered
into these gloomy merasses and persisted
Moore wrote upon the incident of the s'oty
The weird. melancholy ballad commencing-
"They made her grave too cold and damp
For soul so warm and true
And she's gone to the Lake OF the Dismal swamp,
Where all night long, by her freely lamp,
She paddles her light canoe.
"And her freely lamp soon shall see,
And her paddle soon shall hear,
Long and loving ourlfs shall be,
And IN hide the maid In cypress tree
When the footsteps Of death are near
And made the fame of the spot as lasting
as his own. There is no more significant
instance Of the power Of genius to bestow
Immortality upon whatever u touches than
this. Had II not been for hoore's ballad
the Dismal Swamp would never have been
known save around its locality, as q first
class quagmire, hindering passage way and
checkmating cOrn-h-lds. IL Il as familiar to.
day, with the mvsteriou', romantic int or.
ests of Moore's pom, to the NO LIS read
ing aublc, as tue Dead Sea or the shadows
OF the Broken.
What there Is of the Dismal Swamp to
the physical eye, is vast sedgy forest of
cypress, juniper, oak, gum aud pine trees,
Tvs gloomy recesses hlled with pools aud
| swsmps overgroSn with reeds and shr ob-
berry and tangled wid vine.
To Virginia the swamp has a historical
memory clinging to IL, sombre as its cypress
and moses. 1t was the hiding place OF the
Nat. Turner insurrectionists, after their
| first stroke for liberty. For six weeks, to
the whole South 1t seemed that In these
horrid recesses Of nature the avenging
genius Of slavery crouched but for q mo-
ment before covering the land with desola.
| ti,n. Turner and bis followers we're but .
dozen negroes.
To-day the Dismal Swamp canal runs
through IL from North to South, and the
Portsmouth and Roanoke railway crosses
its northern borders. Before the war, the
romantic sentiment had bu II upon Drum
moud lake, near the centre Of the Swamp
hotel, which was considered a sort OF
Gretna Green For the consummation of run.
| away matches.
Nature, as Horace woul say, Is pretty
well run out Of the place with a fork, -or
| canals md railroad iron. But as you ride
through the dreary underwood of the forest
| in skf, you can easily conceive yet that
| The d-mands OF the Southern civilization,
fir veral centuries, will thardly claim tho
Dismal Swamp for sgri, b tlre,