Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1869-09-28
The Great Dismal Swamp-Its History,
Is Mystery, Its Romantic Legends.

A.S La ySLeTy, lJS IOuldUIlC LeS6HuS.
Correspondence Cincinnati Commercial.
Tho air, in clrcuit of thirty miles
is filed with odorous vapor almost
too oppressive for inspiration. The
great dismal swamp is on fire The
flames arc sweeping its border line
for full ten miles from east to west
devouring its underwood and burn,
ing theroots Of its giantcypresses two
feet under the soil. The area Of this
wilderness is three hundred square
miles. Its track lies like that Of an
immense horrid surpent, commencing
nine miles back Of Norfolk and SO
far from the Bay coast, and reaching
southwark thirty miles into the
borders Of North Carolina.
To all the inhabitants of Southern
Virginia living around its dark
borders, the Dismal Swamp has a
fame like that Of a half>explored
catacomb. Ask one of the un-
imaginative residents Of the neighbor-
hood, who has never heard of Tom
Moore, about thir huge, haIf-romantic
wilderness, and his description ends
vita the statement that it is an ugly
place, Of which he knows little and
wishes he knew less, as he has on
some occasions, mirad in il waist
deep, duck-shooting in its margin.
long ago, in the earliest history
OF tie country, AN adventurous hunter
pressed through to the center Of this
wilderness, and discovered vast
sheet of water lying within its
mysterious depths. The water took
tao hunters name, since when Lake
Drommond has become known to
geographical and other fame. In
1901, the "Irish Tom Moore"-the
diminutive, poetic, Jump up and
Kiss me, Tom, . of the ladies-visited
Norfolk, and heard there the tradi-
tional stories Of young man who,
On the the death Of the girl he loved,
lost his reason.
In the lovers rawlings, be often said
she was not dead, but gone to the
Dismal Swamp. He suddenly dis
appeared, and his friends never after
wa DIS heard of him, and it was sur
mised that he had wandered into
these gloomy morasses and persisted.
Moore wrote upon the incident Of
the story. those weird, melancholy
verses commencing
They made her grave too cold and damp
For soul 50 warm and true,
And she's gone to the Lake OF the Dismal swamp
Where all night long by her FREELY lamp,
Fac paddles her white canoe.
And her FREELY lamp / soon shall see
And her paddle l shall hear;
long and loving our life shall be-
And I'll hide the maid in cypress tree
when the footsteps eff Death are near
Ind 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 it touches than this. Had
It not been for Moore's ballad the
Dismal Swamp would never have
been known save around its locality,
as q first class quagmi.e, hindering
passage way and chcckmating corn
helds. 1t is as familiar to-day, with
tie mysterious, romantic interest Of
Moore's poem, to the world reading
public as the Dead Sea or the shadows
OF the Broken.
" hat there is Of the Dismal Swamp
to the physical eye, is vast sedgy
forest OF cypress, juniper, oak and
pine trees, Its gloomy recesses filled
vita pools and swamps overgrown
with roots and shrubbery, and tangled
wild vine.
10 Virginia the swamp has hiss
torieal memory clingling to it,
sombre as its cypress and mosses.-
1t was the hiding place of the Nat.
Turner insurrectiouists, after their
hrst stroke for liberty. For six
weeks to tho whole South it seemed
that in these horrid recesses of nature
tbs avenging genius of slavery
croached but for q moment before
covering the land with desolation.-
Turner and his followers were but a
dozen negroes. The slave system
magnitied tho menace of danger to
tue conscious deserts of its crime
Nat. Turner came out of the Dismal
swamp starved, at last, and was
taken and hung as monster black
tieId, and history has passed him as
murderer on the galIows. If his
rebellion had been successful, as it
deserved, failing by no fault of his,
to Tree his oppressed race, his monu~
ment, to-day would not be unfinished
as Washington's.
To-day the Dismal Swamp canal
runs through it from north to south,
ana the Portsmouth and Roanoke
Railway crosses it's northern borders.
Before the war, the romantic senti-
ment had built upon Drummond
Lake, near the center Of the swamp,
h0tel, which was considered a sort
OF Gretna Green for the comsumma~
tion OF runaway matches"
Nature, as Horace would saw. is
pretty well run out Of the place with
q f0rk-or canals and railroad iron.
But as you ride through the dreary
underwood Of the forest in a skiff.
you can easily conceive yet that the
demands of Southern civilization, for
several centuries, will hardly claim
the Dismal Swamp for agriculture.
The production of beet-root