The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1903-06-26

| modern work OF present uClllIy, cuIIluS
across the eastern edge of the swamp
and furnishing water route from
Norfolk to Pamlico Sound, via Eliza
beth City and Pasquotank river, and
it has been the subject of many Gov
ernment surveys and many violent
discussions, as one of the best inland
water routes from Norfolk to the
South. 1t is by this canal that the
easiest approach TO the swamp can be
made at present in launches, and on it
is carried all the trade and business
travel that still filters through this
wilderness. Modern dred ges rattle
and bang along the big canal all the
year, keeping it deep and passable
and truck boats from the country bor-
dcring the swamp are poled or towed
slowly through to the docks of Nor.
folk, paying toll for the right of way
1t is in the spring that the festival
time comes to the swamp. There is a
comfortable stable camp near the shore
Of Lake Drummond, where the Jerico
and Washington bitches meet and flow
together for few hundred feet before
they join the lake. The bitches pass
by beneath the camps veranda, and
some fifty yards away between the
trunks of the cypress and the gum
trees the lake shows placid and quiet
When the spring is far enough along
for the wild honeysuckle and jasmine
and the arbutus vines to be hanging
in delicious masses over the sides OF
the bitches and reaching down to the
red brown water, of color so clear
and warm and sunny, companies Of
people come from the villages lying
around the borders of the swamp.
Twenty or thirty young people at a
time, with some slight camping outfit,
embark on large, flat-bottomed dugouts
that draw but little water, and then
are poled up the bitches for ten or
twelve miles from the fertile farm lands
Of the outer world to the savagely lux.
uriant beauty of the lake. Then at
the camp they spend night or two,
fishing in the lake, polling along its
shores, doing little shooting, perhaps,
much dancing in the evenings and
merry making, until they are poled
out again, often by different route.
A real spring festival and one that has
been habit in that country for many
years.
The botanists and ornithologists fol-
low the merrymakers and dig and
press and skin and mount the curious
things the others had wondered at-a
scientific post mortem of the beauties
of the swamp. They slip out by the
bitches before the baking sun dries up
those waterways and the long, hot
summer comes in. Then the swamp
lives it's own life. The lake draws in
from the shores; the feeder bitches run
very low, and the great black vul-
lures, with their square fringed wings,
sail lazily over in loneliness.
Those few persevering ones who do
work their way into the swamp at that
time Of the year, who disregard the
long, hot tramp along the bed Of one
of the bitches, where the mud and the
water left from some shower make an
oozy tootway inexpressibly wearying,
who brush aside the yellow flies and
plunge through short cuts of inter
laced vines and swamp weeds, tall and
supple as bamboo and tougher; those
few who have the desire of loneliness
strong enough within them to attempt
this will find their reward. Along the
shores Of shrunken lake the old cypress
stumps have risen to the surface,
crowded th1ckly together, like an age.
old abattis warning off landing parties.
Great heaps of huge white logs and
branches worn to smooth grayness
and twisted into strange shapes by
time and the water, lie tangled among
and above the stumps, making the
shore like the battle-ground of a race
of great antediluvian monsters. They
are all shapes and sizes, these logs, all
gray and very smooth. Here and
there cypress stump rises far above
the water on long, stllt-like roots, 80
high indeed that the chimney swifts
build the nests in its hollows. Some
times from the square tops of one OF
these stumps there springs a feeble
little sprig of new growth, it's branches
spreading out like tiny green para
sol. 1t is only in the whitened stumps
around the lake that any memory is
left of the great woods of those past
times when that water was probably
but little pond, its surface covered
hv ho f,,root