Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-04-28

consecutively. There are accommodations
Tor thirty-two guests eight in a room, two
TO bunk and one sheet to a bed. As there
are objections to one-man-power govern
ment so there are to one-sheet-power beds
but 1t isn't SO bad, when one learns by
trying 1t, that there are not some other
things there which are found in more CIV
nized hotel beds. Evidently the cimex lee
tularius does not find the climate Of the
swamp congenial
The dining room is the only other in the
house, except the kitchen, and 1t is the
reception hall also when the eating fupc-
ton Is not In progress. What We ate in
that hall was corn bread. fish. bacon, eggs
and rolls, with good coffee. Not an elabo-
rate menu, of course, but one to put fat
on your ribs after you got used to it.
Did you ever hear the story of the horse
and the shavings?
Our contingent beat the steamboat crowd
to the hotel by an hour and when the late
arrivals got in the sports forthwith made
for the boats to try their luck with the
'finny tribes" the ''speckled beauties" and
other denizens of the deep. Admiral Day.
with well-known newspaper man and a
well-known physician, went forth with the
others, and, having got not so much as a
nibble. drenching shower rose over the
lake and tumbled right down on the ad-
miral and his party. The admiral and the
well-known physician tried to paddle
ashore, while the well-known newspaper
man sat amidships with an umbrella over
him, and that boat, under the skillful
manipulations Of those two sad sea dogs,
turned around fourteen times ran into
the roots seven times and was ten minutes
going twenty yards. and it raining harder
every minute.
Every rose has it's thorn.
Seven or eight ladies had the courage to
make the voyage into the swamp. but
when they saw the accommoda lions they
hadn't the courage to stay; neither had all
the men save nine and at the last moment
two young ladies braced up and let the
boat go back without them, and they didn'
regret it. nor will they ever. for night in
the Great Dismal Swamp Is an experience
one never forgets.
Mysteries of the Night.
It is at night that the silence and the
solemnity, the mystery and The majesty
of the Great Dismal come with all their
impressiveness and grandeur, and the
human being does not live who can stand
by that shoreless sea and not be profoundly
moved by the invisible and all-pervading
spirit of his weird environments. After the
moon had risen 1 went out into the dark
waters of the lake. and rocking idly in the
moonlight, sat and listened to the stiffness.
No light along the circling marge sent out
its welcome beam to say that man was
there; no sound came forth to herald living
things, save now and then, at intervals, the
solemn hooting of the owl, as IL he tolled
the knell of universal death; no voices of
the night to speak us, sailing on that sound
less sea; wrapped in a shroud of silence, sky
and sea and shore had sunk to sleep, and
We who rocked upon those moonlit waves
were atoms in the silent infinite.
Which reads like an advertisement for the
Dismal Swamp Town Lot Company, but IL
isn't; and if you ever. gentle reader, sit out
there on that lake in boat at midnight
you will know that 1t isn't.
Lake Drummond.
Lake Drummond, as this central sheet of
water is called, is almost circular, being
five miles by six in extent, and its southern
line is very nearly in North Carolina Va
rious geologic myths prevail as to it's origin,
but the real fact is that its site was lower
than the rest of the swamp, and the water
of the surrounding territory, being unable
to repeal a well-known law of physics, ran
down that way, instead of taking to the
hills or climbing a tree. I'm not much of a
geologist. but I'll take issue with any of
them on this point and prove my theory to
be correct.
Tom Moore. an Irish poet of some renown
In his own country. visited the lake about
ninety years ago, and wrote a poem on the
only poetic legend that the swamp has ever
been able to turn out. The legend is to the
effect that young man, whose sweetheart
had died. went crazy and ran off into the
swamp, where he thought she had gone to
paddle white canoe, though what the ca
noe had ever done to be thus punished does
not appear. Toms poem began thus:
"They made her a grave too cold and damn
For heart so warm and true;
And she's gone to the lake Of the Dismal
Swamp,
Where all night long by the FREELY lamp
She paddles her white canoe"
There are six more stanzas, but they do
not add any new particulars to the main
facts, so / shall emit them. Mr., Moore
wrote very good poetry for those days. but
he did not clutter 1t up with facts. and in
this instance he got wolves and birch trees
into the swamp, though the great Creator
couldn't, or didn't, do 1t when he nut n
there. There is small boat on the canal
named tom Moore in his honor. At least
II is partially in his honor, the balance he
ing to enable the brilliant and witty tourist
to remark that however many boats NAV
be taken away, there is always one Moore
and his merry ha. ha, may be heard echoing
through the swamp till the next one comes.
Called Fishing.
There are fish to be caught, but they are
cats and Frenchmen and jack-fsh and
perch and that kind. Sluggish and sleepy
as the waters of the lake are II is
about as exciting to pull them out as 1t is
to pull lacks out of a carpet. Still they